(Re)Engineering Gender Futures: Queer Aesthetics and Visual Resistance in Ali Sethi’s Music Videos

Introduction:
This study explores how Pakistani singer and author Ali Sethi’s music videos Pasoori (2022) and Rung (2023) employ queer aesthetics to reimagine gender beyond binary logic. In a cultural landscape where queer and transgender lives are socially marginalised and legally endangered, Sethi’s visual art becomes a site of resistance and conceptual transformation.

Methods:
Grounded in Matthew J. Cull’s analytic trans philosophy—particularly his notions of “gender conceptual engineering” and “gender pluralism”—the research adopts an interdisciplinary qualitative framework combining conceptual analysis and visual semiotics. Through close reading of mise-en-scène, embodiment, sound, and colour, the study interprets how these videos function as forms of “ecumenical engineering,” modifying cultural representational devices to host plural meanings of gender.

Results:
Findings indicate that Pasoori and Rung challenge both heteronormative and homonormative frameworks by queering traditional South Asian motifs such as Sufi mysticism, truck art, and Mughal design. These works transform aesthetic codes—costume, choreography, and lighting—into political tools of visibility and epistemic repair. Sethi’s visual language enacts what Cull terms “concepts for the transition,” creating conceptual and affective infrastructures for livable gender identities within restrictive sociocultural conditions.

Conclusions:
The study concludes that Sethi’s videos operate as acts of conceptual and visual resistance. They exemplify how popular music can function as cultural philosophy—reengineering gender concepts toward inclusivity, affective justice, and queer futurity in Pakistan and beyond.