Keywords
transness
equality
secularism
liberalism
gender abolition
gender equality
sikh feminism
How to Cite
Abstract
This paper reflects on Sikh feminist critique and its mobilization of egalitarianism as a horizon. In doing so, I explore how Sikh onto-epistemologies unsettle liberal conceptions of equality, critique, and justice. By problematizing the very system and construct of gender, I orient gender abolition as a horizon to ask the question, what can Sikhi teach us about gender abolition? In analyzing the life around this question, I think through ethics of academic production in its engagement with Sikhi.
References
Arondekar, Anjali. Abundance: Sexuality's History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.
Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Bains, Satwinder Kaur. "Interrogating Gender in Sikh Tradition and Practice." Religions 11, no. 1 (2020): 34. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11010034.
Bal, Jaspreet, and Santbir Singh Sarkar Daman. “Reintegrating the Feminine Voice Inherent in Sikh Scripture.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 37, no. 2 (2021): 65–82. https://dx.doi.org/10.2979/jfemistudreli.37.2.05.
Bey, Marquis, and Jesse A. Goldberg. “Queer as in Abolition Now!” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 28, no. 2 (April 2022): 159–163. https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-9608091.
Bey, Marquis. Black Trans Feminism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022.
Brown, Wendy. States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Butler, Judith. “The Sensibility of Critique: Response to Asad and Mahmood.” In Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, edited by Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, 97. Berkeley, CA: Townsend Center for the Humanities, 2013.
Butler, Judith. “What Is Critique? An Essay on Foucault’s Virtue.” In The Judith Butler Reader, edited by Sarah Salih, 302–22. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004.
Dhavan, Priya. “Tracing Gender in the Texts and Practices of the Early Khalsa.” In Sikhism and Women: History, Texts, and Experience, edited by Doris R. Jakobsh, 45–67. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Foucault, Michel. “What Is Critique?” In What Is Enlightenment?: Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions, edited by James Schmidt. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Gill, Harjant Singh. “Transnational Hair (and Turban): Sikh Masculinity, Embodied Practices, and Politics of Representation in an Era of Global Travel.” Ethnography 23, no. 2 (2022): 226–248. https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138120923712.
Gill-Peterson, Jules. “30. Gender.” In Keywords for Gender and Sexuality Studies, edited by The Keywords Feminist Editorial Collective, 96–101. New York: New York University Press, 2021. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9781479808168.003.0034.
Jakobsh, Doris R. “Relocating Gender in Sikh History: Transformation, Meaning and Identity.” Retrospective Theses and Dissertations, 1919–2007. Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2000. http://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0089814.
Judge, Rajbir Singh. Prophetic Maharaja: Loss, Sovereignty, and the Sikh Tradition in Colonial South Asia. New York: Columbia University Press, 2024.
Judge, Rajbir Singh. “The Construction of Dangerous Boundaries.” Sikh Research Journal 7, no. 2 (2022): 27–44. https://doi.org/10.62307/srj.v7i2.35.
Kaur, Sophia. “Femme-inist Futures: Examples from Sikh Praxis.” In Begumpura Collective Zine, edited by manmit singh and prabhdeep singh kehal, 2023. https://qtsikharchive.org/begumpura-collective-zine/.
kehal, prabhdeep singh. “Negotiating Utopia: A Framework for Researcher Subjectivity Formation Through Entangled Trans Subjectivities” (Unpublished article. Cited with the author’s permission).
Kohli, Aarti. “Constructing the Ideal Sikh: Historiographies of Sikh Martial Traditions.” Intellectual Resonance 4, no. 2 (2016): 45–60.
Kohli, Aarti. “Militarization of Sikh Masculinity.” Graduate Journal of Social Sciences 12, no. 3 (2016): 75–96.
Mahmood, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Sabherwal, Simran. “The Elasticity of Caste in the Sikh Diaspora: Jat Cool and Caste Masculinities in the Pacific Northwest.” Journal of Asian American Studies 27, no. 1 (2024): 91–114. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jaas.2024.a926985.
Sangha, Jaspreet. Interview by manmit singh. July 18, 2023. Sikh LGBTQIA+ Oral History Archive. https://qtsikharchive.org/directory/.
Sikh Research Institute. The Sikh Cast. “Nam: Divine Identification: The Fragrance of Bhai Vir Singh.” Featuring Inni Kaur and Kiranjot Kaur. December 30, 2022. Spotify. https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sikh-cast-sikhri/episodes/Nam-Divine-Identification--The-Fragrance-of-Bhai-Vir-Singh-e1stbj6/a-a9454ck.
Sikh Research Institute. The Sikh Cast. “What Is Nam Simran?” Featuring Harinder Singh. October 10, 2023. Spotify. https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/the-sikh-cast-sikhri/episodes/What-is-Nam-Simran---Ask-SikhRI-e2acr7a/a-aaf75k7.
singh, manmit. “Reading Sikhi and Transness Together: Theorizing a Politics of Death and Unbodiment.” Sikh Formations, February 2024, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/17448727.2024.2318873.
Singh, Nikky-Guninder Kaur. The Birth of the Khalsa: A Feminist Re-Memory of Sikh Identity. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
Singh, Nikky-Guninder Kaur. “Why Did I Not Light the Fire? The Refeminization of Ritual in Sikhism.” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 16, no. 1 (2000): 63–85. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25002376.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2025 manmit singh