Discostan as a Radical Act of Community
Image Description: Collage featuring an array of jasmine and pink carnation flowers, vintage images of Malaysian singer Zaleha Hamid, as well as large, sprawling text that reads “Come and see Discostan.”
As we feel the mounting pressure to dismantle oppressive institutions, events such as Donald Trump’s presidency or the ongoing degradation of the climate only seem to demonstrate the widening gap between collective action and progress. The legacy of colonization is deeply entrenched in our institutions, such that it requires a global revolution, but decolonization can feel overwhelming—too massive to tackle and too abstract to act upon. Decolonization is not a distant theoretical project or a task for governments, but rather something we can practice in our daily lives. It may be easy to trivialize grassroots gatherings or art-centric queer social events, but community is ultimately the first step in mobilization and organization. Discostan is an enlightening case study in how community can be a radical act of resistance and decolonization. Discostan is a radical multimedia collective that supersedes the boundaries of nationality by enabling people to build a community around music from the Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) region and beyond. The collective uses music and dance to pursue a mission of liberating queer and trans bodies, celebrating cultural histories, and bridging international borders. Decolonization does not have to be a hopeless struggle or an impossible ideal. Instead, it can begin with connection and culture—thereby laying the foundation for larger movements of mobilization and political change
Discostan’s primary tagline, “Decolonizing the Dancefloor since 2011,” presents a radical mission that may overwhelm and intimidate many activists. The legacies of colonization and its predecessor, imperialism, are so fundamental to our institutions that they must be entirely deconstructed. In Franz Fanon’s book “Wretched of the Earth,” he postulates that decolonization is the undoing of colonialism in which our social fabric will be changed inside out. Fanon argues that decolonization is marked not only by the independence of colonized nations but also by the extinction of structures, cultures, and legacies that oppress colonized peoples. Fanon’s definition of decolonization is a zero-sum game—there can be no compromise between colonists and the colonized—thus, decolonization requires the total and mass destruction of colonial institutions. Fanon thus seeks to dismantle the foundational structures of power, wealth, and culture that have defined the modern world for centuries, as in the oppressive systems of governance, economic exploitation, racial hierarchies, and cultural erasure that persist that have long persisted. Decolonization is radical because it calls into question everything that has been normalized: national borders drawn by colonial powers, capitalist economies structured around resource extraction, and Western epistemologies that dictate what knowledge is valued. Such a radical undertaking is comparable to a biblical flood that cleanses and remakes the world, making us pause and consider how to approach such a necessary yet frightening task.
Those who feel this mounting anxiety to take action against oppressive institutions are presented with two options: one, hear the call to action or two, embrace nihilism. The option we choose is ultimately shaped by our sense of self-efficacy. We may ask ourselves, “To what extent can my actions help to dismantle colonial structures?”
If one believes that their individual actions are effective in the collective movement, then they might practice productive choices such as mindful consumerism, attending protests, or participating in elections to support their local and extended communities. The steps we make towards progress are essential to reckoning with our institutions, regardless of their effect size.
On the other hand, there are those who believe they do not have a significant impact on decolonization, and so they fall into the camp of inaction. Nihilism presents itself as a state of paralysis, as in civic disengagement and/or disinterest in activism. Instead of reading about the news and standing witness to the suffering of distant people, it can be tempting to bury our heads in the sand, ignore our role in the colonial institution, and throw ourselves into the minute tasks of daily life. However, similar to the exponential power in collective action, progress will never be possible if people give in to nihilism and see oppression as inevitable.
All great movements start with a foundational first step, and creating communities at any scale can give impetus to broader decolonization. We can avoid the pit of nihilism and recognize our self-efficacy if we understand the power of collective movement. Liberation becomes possible by centering empathy and creating solidarity among one another. Collective activism emerges from creating safe spaces to educate and empower each other.
In my own safe spaces, I have heard the criticism that facilitating “artsy queer hangouts” is not revolutionary enough, and that activists need to be as serious as “the other side.” There is some truth in the sentiment that qualifying everyday actions as political can dilute a movement. I probably cannot invite all my queer friends to my house for a “BRAT” listening party and call it liberation, so there is evidently a line between socializing and organizing. We generally understand that organizing is the socializing and uniting of people for a particular purpose— for example, encampments or walkouts. Even so, the line between socializing and organizing often blurs because of the political nature of safe spaces. Book clubs, churches, and even Reddit forums are all places for marginalized bodies to engage and develop community. These safe spaces are politicized, as observed in instances such as the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016 in which a gunman killed 49 people in a queer nightclub. If marginal identities are inherently political, then creating spaces for marginalized bodies will always be considered a political action.
Queer club culture is a manifestation of this realization, and its origins lie in the discotheque. Today, a cursory search for “disco” on Pinterest populates images of limber white women with Farrah Fawcett hair and swanky bell bottoms—perhaps even a white man with a cartoonish afro—but the inception of club culture was Black and Brown discos in New York City. Stonewall Inn became a landmark in queer history when police raids of the gay nightclub sparked protest and visible violence, highlighting the systemic oppression of Black and Brown queer bodies and inspiring a wave of similar protests. The ongoing satire about who “threw the first brick at Stonewall” demonstrates how small actions catalyze dynamic change. Although pop culture today depicts disco as musicians like the BeeGees and Earth, Wind and Fire, at its core, disco is a case study for the power of safe spaces in championing the movement towards collective liberation.
Among many titles—multimedia platform, performance art space, club and record label— Discostan is a movement dedicated to celebrating cultural histories, liberating queer bodies, and bridging international borders. The Republic of Discostan aptly uses the “stan” suffix to present itself as a nation, one that unites bodies through dance music from Southwest Asia and North African (SWANA) regions. “From Bangkok to Bombay” and from disco to devotional music, this space is unrestrained by the confines of national borders. Through its events from Lahore to Los Angeles, Discostan has become an international movement that creates community as an act of political and social resistance.
Discostan wholly embraces this legacy and takes on the radical act of creating community. The Republic of Discostan is a country insofar as it is a home for people marginalized at an intersectional level—who wield the duality of Brownness and queerness— to reclaim and rewrite the history they come from. The very idea of national identity creates in-groups and out-groups, from which selective empathy emerges. When we care and empathize with members of our nation more than others, we have measured the value of a life based purely on what side of the border it lies. At its core, a country should be the institutionalization of a community. Discostan seeks to reimagine what a country can look like by dismantling the borders produced by colonial history and harnessing the binding power of sound.
In the Republic of Discostan, music itself becomes a borderless homeland—a space where people transcend national, ethnic, and cultural boundaries to form a shared community. Discostan explicitly locates its roots in SWANA, a term that does not outline particular countries, but rather comprises the actions, movements, and communities that transcend colonial borders. SWANA, and thus Discostan, makes the idea of homeland universal to people through this deconstruction of sovereign territories. Discostan recognizes that homeland is migratory for forcibly displaced people, refugees, and immigrants; Discostan’s events are held within and beyond the SWANA region, extending to countries such as the United States and Mexico as a means to reconnect with cultural roots without rigidity or exclusion. Discostan gathers together communities in a radical act of decolonization which proudly protests the limits imposed by geography and colonial politics. Discostan echoes the original history of disco and tackles the Euro-American narrative that Islam is inherently homophobic by intentionally hosting queer artists and celebrating queer bodies on its dancefloor, all while creating a space which refuses to lend itself to the colonist’s palate. This is not an educational space, but rather an environment for those who have learned the importance of pre- and post-colonial histories.
By organizing people into a strong community, Discostan provides the groundwork from which activists can mobilize towards other political resistance efforts. Discostan’s gatherings are not limited to nightclubs, but also comprise events centered around collective grief, discussion, ritual, and music to ground its members amidst turmoil and suffering. Many of these events are further used to crowdfund, such as their social event in Lahore, which created an emergency fund for trans people in Lahore struggling with housing and medical care, as well as direct mutual aid to people in Lebanon and Palestine. Despite our anxieties around destabilizing institutions to create radical change, the great flood of decolonization must begin with the development of community. Discostan’s commitment to creating a homeland accessible to anyone brings about strides in the movement towards collective liberation from colonial and imperial structures.
