Customer Reviews

Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times (Next Wave: New Directions in Women's Studies)

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Jasbir K. Puar offers an unusually inspired diagnosis of today's war machines and the politics of knowledge-making in an era of counter/terror. "Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times" is a smart and deeply disturbing account of recent realignments of race, gender, sexuality, nation, class and ethnicity in the context of contemporary forces of counterterrorism, nationalism and securitization. Wielding an expansive methodological and theoretical toolkit, Puar puts her sharp analytic to excellent use, offering timely criticisms on a vast range of key concepts within contemporary transnational cultural studies. With a lyrical prose that is at times hauntingly poetic, if mildly "Deleuze-ional," Puar remains consistently astute in her political and cultural commentaries. The text follows recent scholarly works that: critically reassess the epistemologies of secular-liberal imaginaries; extend the affective turn in post-structuralist theory; and strengthen the transnational turn in queer studies. For these and many other reasons, the book has garnered critical back-cover acclaim from the likes of Rey Chow, Lauren Berlant and Sara Ahmed. Entirely deserving of their praise, Terrorist Assemblages is sure to make waves in transnational feminism, South Asian and Arab American studies, queer studies, counter/terrorism and security studies, affect studies and postcolonial critique. In short, Puar's book is a rare gift for scholars invested in exposing and undermining the links between race, sexuality and counter/terrorism, and for its archival strength alone, it will stimulate our diverse fields for years to come.