Join NYSEAN for the book launch of Enduring Otherwise: Muslim Queer and Trans Worldmaking in Indonesia by Ferdiansyah Thajib, Senior Lecturer in the Elite Graduate Program “Standards of Decision-Making Across Cultures” at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Rianne Subijanto, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at Baruch College-CUNY, will moderate the discussion.

Drawing on ethnographic research in multiple locations in Indonesia, Enduring Otherwise examines how Muslim individuals and communities grapple with the challenges and possibilities of inhabiting queer and trans religiosity. Some distance themselves from religious tenets because of the harms implicated in them, while others immerse themselves in religious practices and spiritual values, seeking to reimagine them. There are also those who remain caught in tensions, having to navigate a life entrenched in ambivalence. Yet across these varied engagements, they continue to find ways to keep going. Offering a nuanced account of the affective politics of worldmaking at the intersection of sexuality, gender, and religion, Enduring Otherwise highlights how the drawn-out moments of hope, failure, improvisation, and exhaustion experienced by queer and gender non-conforming Indonesians configure efforts to create a world where no one will have to endure the unendurable anymore.