summary of Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times by Jasbir K. Puar:

Jasbir K. Puar’s Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times develops and extends her influential concept of homonationalism, a term she first introduced in Terrorist Assemblages, to further explore how sexuality, race, gender, nationalism, and geopolitics intersect in the contemporary global order. In this book, Puar draws on the philosophical frameworks of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, particularly their notions of assemblage, affect, and biopolitics, to rethink how power operates through bodies, identities, and collective formations. Rather than seeing sexuality and nationalism as discrete categories, she shows how they interpenetrate and mutually reinforce each other, producing forms of queer inclusion that align with state power while simultaneously marginalizing and excluding racialized, migrant, and non-normative populations. Puar critiques liberal narratives that frame progress in terms of LGBTQ+ rights recognition, arguing that these narratives are often complicit in broader structures of imperialism, Islamophobia, and securitization, particularly in the post-9/11 world. Central to her analysis is the idea that certain queer subjects—especially white, middle-class, gender-conforming gays and lesbians—are incorporated into nationalist projects, while others are marked as threats or outsiders. By deploying assemblage theory, she resists the tendency to reduce politics to identity and instead emphasizes the contingent, networked, and affective dimensions of power. The book not only interrogates contemporary global politics but also challenges queer theory itself to move beyond identity-based frameworks toward more fluid, dynamic accounts of subjectivity and resistance. Assemblages is thus both a theoretical intervention and a political critique, urging readers to recognize the complicity of queer liberalism in exclusionary national projects while also envisioning alternative, resistant forms of queer politics attuned to global struggles against empire, racism, and state violence.