Neither Man nor Woman: Unknowing Gender in Faqiri

This paper considers the constellations of alternate gendered embodiments and plural notions of being-in-the world within the subaltern religious tradition of Faqiri in contemporary Pakistan through the figure of an elderly faqir called Hajji Habib who sees themselves as neither man nor woman. The state sees Hajji Habib through the categories of “trans” or khwajasara but they actively reject these as well. I trace the use of paradox and double negation within Hajji Habib’s speech and as a staging of the dilemma of saying the unsayable through its resonances with Sufi thought and Indo-Islamic poetic traditions. Just as paradox in this tradition reveals the limits of a discourse enables meaning to go beyond the dualistic, I argue that paying attention to Hajji Habib’s words allow us to look past classificatory regimes and binary, biologized gender to see how gender is plurally performed, embodied, and imagined within Faqiri.