Colonialisms and Queer Politics

Abstract

Colonialisms and Queer Politics: Sexualities, Genders, and Unsettling Colonialities provides a ground-breaking comparative analysis of empires and colonialities in gender and sexuality studies. As dynamic decolonizing research generates new insights, this volume provides a systematic comparative analysis of eleven empires and colonialities with respect to sexualities and genders beyond heterosexuality and the gender binary. The book’s chapters focus on specific empires, varying in association with Eurocentrism: Portuguese, Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Ottoman, Russian, Belgian, German, Italian, and United States empires. Distinctively, chapters also investigate continuing colonialities, particularly effects shaping contemporary governmental regulation and LGBTIQ+ activisms. Hence, the book contributes to global historical sociology and history, international political sociology, international relations, and world politics scholarship. The volume argues that long histories of European empires since the fifteenth century reveal changing and extremely diverse forms of sexuality and gender regulation. Changing discourses and practices of racialization are critical, as shown in the difference between early Portuguese interracial sexual mixing and late nineteenth-century British empire discourses, proscribing “miscegenation” and criminalizing sexual activity between men. In the twentieth century, some European states were preoccupied by homosexuality, yet others such as Belgium did not regulate “same-sex” sexual acts in colonies. The book’s comparative analysis argues that religious differences between Protestants and Catholics had important effects, including through schooling practices, influencing later receptiveness to transnational evangelism. Limits of Eurocentric epistemologies are shown by marginal cases including Russian and Ottoman empires. This book distinctively argues that comparative understanding of colonialisms is crucial for rethinking and advancing global queer politics today.