Febi R Ramadhan

Northwestern University, Anthropology, Graduate Student

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Hello! I am an MA/PhD student in the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University. I study everyday production of religious knowledge on same-sex sexualities in Indonesia, particularly by looking at how Muslims with same-sex attraction, anti-LGBTQ+ Muslim activists, and queer Muslims produce, reproduce, contest, and engage with Islamic knowledge, Islamic epistemology, and conversion therapy practices in Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere.

My research is located at the nexus between cultural anthropology, gender and sexuality studies, religious studies, and science and technology studies. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions, are interested in working together, or just want to talk about anything!
Address: Evanston, IL

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Papers by Febi R Ramadhan

An ontological struggle: Islamic political theology and the criminalization of same‐sex sexuality in Indonesia

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Sep 27, 2023

This paper examines legal efforts to criminalize same-sex sexualities between consenting adults b... more This paper examines legal efforts to criminalize same-sex sexualities between consenting adults by conservative Muslim movements in Indonesia, which is epitomized by the 2016 Judicial Review on the Indonesian Penal Code in the Constitutional Court of Indonesia, the continuous resistance against the legislation of Sexual Violence Law, and the legislation of the current Indonesian Penal Code. Based on my ethnographic engagements with the court transcript of the Judicial Review and other legal archives, I argue that the conservative Muslim movements’ legal effort to criminalize sexuality in Indonesia is an exercise of Islamic political theology that revolves around a certain ontology of personhood that assumes the relationships that “the human” has with God, the state, and the nation, which is apparent in their assertion on the intrinsic difference between sexual violence (“kekerasan seksual”) vs. sexual crime (“kejahatan seksual”). This paper aims to: (1) demonstrate that anthropological inquiries of ontologies can further develop the conceptual framework of political theology, especially in elucidating how ontological imposition of “the human” and its personhood play a pivotal part in conservative movements’ repertoires in criminalizing sexuality; and (2) make use of Southeast Asian studies’ scholarships and cases to speak back to the broader discussion on the fissures in/of secular imaginaries and the secularization processes.

Berdamai dengan Keterbatasan Epistemologis: Dilema Metodologis pada Riset Etnografi di Ranah Virtual

Jurnal Antropologi Indonesia, Jun 30, 2022

Following the proliferation of digital media usage, the world has seen an increasing amount of di... more Following the proliferation of digital media usage, the world has seen an increasing amount of digitally-mediated lives in everyday contexts. While anthropological scholarship has started to address this ever-growing subject, anthropologists are mainly preoccupied with human engagements in virtual worlds that have their own tangible and embodied sense of spatiality (e.g., online role-playing and gaming communities). In so doing, anthropologists have yet to comprehensively delve into online practices in more disembodied and intangible networked environments like Facebook. In this article, I examine methodological challenges faced by anthropologists who study online communities in such disembodied worlds. I draw on my ongoing online ethnographic research on a community of Indonesian Muslims with same-sex attraction who believe their sexuality is a divine test from God and actively build an online community on Facebook and other social media platforms (e.g., OORTH, WhatsApp, and Zoom) to reform themselves into heterosexuals. Unable to fully submerge in the world of their interlocutors through sensorial approaches and embodying practices as conventional ethnographers do, anthropologists who study online communities on social media platforms like Facebook may encounter an impasse in their ethnographic observations. Reflecting on this impasse, I argue that anthropological inquiries have to be reoriented and go beyond the framework of sensorial observation and embodying practices. Even though such methodological reorientation might require anthropological knowledge to be partial and incomplete, this is necessary to fully capture what it means to be human in the disembodied and intangible virtual worlds.

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Of agency, Allah, and authority: the making of a divine trial among Muslims with same-sex attraction in Indonesia

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023

This article delves into the life stories of Indonesian Muslims who struggle with same-sex attrac... more This article delves into the life stories of Indonesian Muslims who struggle with same-sex attraction (henceforth SSA) and believe that their SSA is divinely foreordained as a test from Allah. I draw on seventeen months of ethnographic research in an online community called Yayasan Peduli Sahabat (henceforth YPS) which prescribes ways to live heterosexually to its members and clients with SSA. In this article, I argue that the members of YPS are exercising their agency when they try to discipline their sexuality and live as heterosexuals. In this way, this study contributes to the existing literature on the agency of illiberal religious subjects by discussing the extent to which agency is practised in the face of one's relations with the divine and human-mediated religious authority. Drawing on these interrelated themes, this article conjoins anthropological scholarship on self-cultivation, divine intervention, and religious authority. Instead of understanding Muslims’ lives through the shift from a self-cultivation paradigm to the paradigm of divine intervention, I suggest that both paradigms are instructive and attending to them could elucidate how Muslims with SSA exercise their agency while continuing to be affected by the divine.

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An ontological struggle: Islamic political theology and the criminalization of same-sex sexuality in Indonesia

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2023

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Berdamai dengan Keterbatasan Epistemologis: Dilema Metodologis pada Riset Etnografi di Ranah Virtual

Antropologi Indonesia, 2022

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“Kekerasan Bisa Dimaknai Berbeda-Beda”: Ragam Pemaknaan Atas Kekerasan Terhadap Perempuan Dalam Praktik Gerakan Sosial Aliansi Laki-Laki Baru

Paradigma: Jurnal Kajian Budaya, Jan 24, 2018

This article examines the variety of meaning towards violence against women in Aliansi Laki-laki ... more This article examines the variety of meaning towards violence against women in Aliansi Laki-laki Baru's social movement practice as a social movement that focuses on issues regarding male engagement in ending violence against women and achieving gender equality. Using ethnographic methods, I argue that social movement, particularly Aliansi Laki-laki Baru, could not be understood as monolithic and homogeneous entity because its participants could have various meanings on violence against women. While violence against women could be contextualized as Aliansi Laki-laki Baru's main focus, participants in ALB could construct their own meaning on 'violence against women' as a sociocultural phenomenon. Furthermore, I argue that the variety of meaning towards issue on violence against women could be caused by ALB's participants' subjectivity and their own personal experiences.

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"Kekerasan itu Katarsis dari Patriarki!": Resistensi pada Kekerasan terhadap Perempuan dalam Praktik Gerakan Sosial Aliansi Laki-laki Baru

Antropologi Indonesia, 2017

This research examines a movement of men's participation towards eliminating violence against wom... more This research examines a movement of men's participation towards eliminating violence against women in Indonesia known as Aliansi Laki-laki Baru (hereinafter referred to as ALB). Using an ethnographic method, this research shows that ALB is a social movement-could not be understood as a homogeneous and monolithic entity because of its diverse meanings of violence against women perceived by the participants. Furthermore, this research addresses the discourse productions as an act of resistance towards patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity. In this paper, I argue that patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity are the ideology of violence against women embodied in cultural violence. In doing so, this article shows the interwoven relationship between social movement's meaning-making towards the focus of the movement and the resistance and its main cause: patriarchy and hegemonic masculinity in the context of ALB's social movement practices.

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Books by Febi R Ramadhan

Islam dan Tubuh-tubuh Queer

by Amar Alfikar and Febi R Ramadhan

Bunga rampai ini hadir untuk menawarkan perspektif dan tafsir-tafsir alternatif dalam memahami ke... more Bunga rampai ini hadir untuk menawarkan perspektif dan tafsir-tafsir alternatif dalam memahami keragaman gender dan seksualitas melalui sudut pandang Islam. Kami mengambil tema besar ‘queer’ sebagai sebuah istilah yang merujuk pada minoritas gender dan seksualitas. Queer merupakan istilah bahasa Inggris yang semakna dengan ghurabā’ dalam bahasa Arab, artinya: orang-orang asing/terasing/diasingkan. Dalam konteks gender dan seksualitas, kata queer merujuk pada identitas yang non-heteronormatif, non-normatif, non-conforming, dan istilah-istilah semakna lainnya. Queer menolak untuk ‘tunduk’ pada heteronormativitas atau pandangan dan situasi di mana ‘satu-satunya yang sah dan valid’ adalah mereka yang heteroseksual.

Pandangan yang heteronormatif ini kemudian mewujud dalam tafsir-tafsir keagamaan yang secara monolitik meyakini bahwa ‘satu-satunya yang suci’ hanyalah mereka yang heteroseksual. Tulisan-tulisan dalam buku ini mengajak pembaca untuk mengembara, memahami, dan merenung kembali tentang hakikat ‘yang suci’ dalam perspektif non-normatif, bahwa segala yang tergelar di jagad raya adalah tajalli Allah. Karenanya, umat manusia yang mengidentifikasikan diri sebagai queer, atau yang identitas gender dan seksualitasnya berbeda, juga bagian dari refleksi rahmat-Nya di muka bumi, yang tak boleh dipinggirkan dan diasingkan.

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An ontological struggle: Islamic political theology and the criminalization of same‐sex sexuality in Indonesia

PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Sep 27, 2023