ABSTRACT
I engage with gender and visuality in two ways: as representation and as performance. Building on Judith Butler’s influential work on gender as performative and inspired by Raewyn Connell’s work on masculinities, I focus on gender as a social practice that constantly refers to bodies, to what bodies do (or don’t do) and to how bodies matter, visually. Drawing on Jenny Nordberg’s book The Underground Girls of Kabul (2014), I use the cultural phenomenon of bacha posh in Afghanistan, a practice in which girls are brought up as boys, to demonstrate the visual politics of gender and sex. I aim to show how visuality is not only essential to how gender is understood and communicated but also offers opportunities to challenge associated cultural practices. I conclude by highlighting that we miss out on understanding key aspects of how global politics works unless we pay attention to visual logics of gender.
