@article{Hamzić_2019, title={The Dera Paradigm: Homecoming of the Gendered Other}, volume={21}, url={https://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/ethnoscripts/article/view/1415}, abstractNote={<p>This article engages with the idiosyncratic dwelling practices of <em>khwajasara</em>, a Pakistani gender-variant subjectivity better known as <em>hijre</em> in the larger South Asian context. As a prevalent type of <em>khwajasara</em> household, the <em>dera</em> plays a paradigmatic role in their homecoming narratives; whether as a post-home, the refuge from an unhomely natal familial house and a terrorising school environment, or as an intermediary bodily, spiritual and communal sanctuary on a journey towards one’s Home after post-home. Anchored in the idea of the <em>dera</em>, and especially as intimated to me on a late September afternoon in Lahore, this article zigzags through <em>khwajasara</em>’s historical and present-day multi-local experiences of homecoming, which is posited here as both spatial and identitary journeying towards collective <em>thereness</em>. As a property of dwelling with kindred souls, I argue that thereness equips <em>khwajasara</em> with exploratory senses of the subject, including, at times, those of being otherworldly and nomadic. Such thereness disrupts the very idea of settlement and allows the <em>dera</em> and its inhabitants to not only transgress communal boundaries—such as those of gender, religion, ethnicity and language—but also to construe home as a journey, not a destination. At the same time, it reveals various <em>productive anxieties</em> about <em>khwajasara</em>’s—or, indeed, everyone’s—classed, urbanised, economised and gendered home-life.</p>}, number={1}, journal={Ethnoscripts}, author={Hamzić, Vanja}, year={2019}, month={Sep.} }