Prevrashenie (Transformation) of Bacha: Cracks and Ghostly Matters in the National/ist Heritage of Central Asia

Abstract

Current attempts by local national/ist governments to impose a rigid binary gender order on local populations are as colonial as the Russian and Soviet colonial attempts to remake Central Asian communities; these efforts are deemed to fail. Bach[ch]a (adolescent feminine male performers), as a gender position and socio-cultural institution not reduced to sexuality, is but one example of such efforts’ futility. By adapting to a changing socio-political context, bacha did not disappear; overtime, this institution prevratilos’ (has transformed) into something else.