Journal article

Publication year: 2013

Pages: 191-222

Journal: boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture

Volume number: 40

Issue number: 1

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-2072918

Publisher: Duke University Press

Abstract: 

The past decades have been ones of unprecedented sociocultural and legal
gains for queer politics. But these achievements have been accompanied
by a severe critique of queer racism and of the imperialist agenda of
global gay politics. The employment of gender and sexuality as alibis
for legitimizing violence against religious groups, especially Muslims,
has opened up fundamental questions regarding the future of queer
emancipatory politics. While supportive of the urgency of critiquing the
complicities of Western queer politics in neoliberal, imperial
discourses, I am troubled by the silences on and the lack of critique of
homophobia and heterosexism in diasporic and postcolonial contexts. The
unwillingness to address the violent experiences of those subjects who
are vulnerable to both queer racism as well as postcolonial
heteronormativity has become the Achilles’ heel of the recent
postsecular turn in queer postcolonial scholarship and activism.
Religious violence against sexual minorities is ignored by prioritizing
violence against religious minorities. The sole focus on queer racism
and homonationalism in the global North neglects how supposedly
conflicting ideologies of heteronormative nationalisms on both sides of
the postcolonial divide in fact collaborate with each other. There is an
urgent need to explore nonimperialist strategies of contesting
heterosexism and homophobia in diasporic and postcolonial contexts and
pursue a more complex, multidirectional politics of critique that is
directed at coercive practices across the secularism-religion divide.
Critique, when engaging with solely one dimension of domination, risks
reproducing violence. Thus, anti-imperialist and antiracist critique of
queer politics must be accompanied by a critique of “reproductive
heteronormativity” within postcolonial contexts.

Harvard Citation style: Dhawan, N. (2013) The Empire Prays Back : Religion, Secularity, and Queer Critique, boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture, 40(1), pp. 191-222. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-2072918

APA Citation style: Dhawan, N. (2013). The Empire Prays Back : Religion, Secularity, and Queer Critique. boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture. 40(1), 191-222. https://doi.org/10.1215/01903659-2072918