Queer Necropolitics
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Queer Necropolitics Queer Necropolitics mobilizes the concept of ‘necropolitics’ in order to illuminate everyday death worlds, from more expected sites such as war, torture or imperial invasion to the mundane and normalized violence of racism and gender norm - ativity, the market, and the prison–industrial complex. Contributors here inter- rogate the distinction between valuable and pathological lives by attending to the symbiotic co-constitution of queer subjects folded into life, and queerly abjected racialized populations marked for death. Drawing on diverse yet comple mentary methodologies, including textual and visual analysis, ethnography and histori - ography, the authors argue that the distinction between ‘war’ and ‘peace’ dissolves in the face of the banality of death in the zones of abandonment that regularly accompany contemporary democratic regimes. This book comes at a time when the intrinsic and self-evident value of queer rights and protections, from gay marriage to hate crimes, is increasingly put in question. It assembles writings that explore the new queer vitalities within their wider context of structural violence and neglect. Moving between diverse geo - political contexts – the US and the UK, Guatemala and Palestine, the Philippines, Iran and Israel – the chapters in this volume interrogate claims to queerness in the face(s) of death, both spectacular and everyday. The book will appeal to activist scholars and students from various social sciences and humanities, particularly those across the fields of law, cultural and media studies, gender, sexuality and intersectionality studies, race, and conflict studies, as well as those studying nationalism, colonialism, prisons and war. It should be read by all those trying to make sense of the contradictions inherent in regimes of rights, citizenship and diversity. Jin Haritaworn is Assistant Professor of Gender, Race and Environment at York University in Toronto. Adi Kuntsman is Simon Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. Silvia Posocco is Lecturer in the Department of Psychosocial Studies, Birkbeck College, University of London. Social Justice Series editors: Sarah Lamble, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK, Kate Bedford, University of Kent, UK, Davina Cooper, University of Kent, UK, and Sarah Keenan, SOAS, UK Social Justice is a new, theoretically engaged, interdisciplinary series exploring the changing values, politics and institutional forms through which claims for equality, democracy and liberation are expressed, manifested and fought over in the contemporary world. The series addresses a range of contexts from transnational political forums, to nation-state and regional controversies, to small-scale social experiments. At its heart is a concern, and inter-disciplinary engagement with, the present and future politics of power, as constituted through territory, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, economics, ecology and culture. Foregrounding struggle, imagined alternatives and the embedding of new norms, Social Justice critically explores how change is wrought through law and governance, everyday social and bodily practices, dissident knowledges, and movements for citizenship, belonging, and reinvented community. Titles in this series: Intersectionality and Beyond: Law, Power and the Politics of Location Emily Grabham, Davina Cooper, Jane Krishnadas and Didi Herman (eds.), 2009 Regulating Sexuality: Legal Consciousness in Lesbian and Gay Lives Rosie Harding, 2010 Rights of Passage: Sidewalks and the Regulation of Public Flow Nicholas Blomley, 2010 Anarchism and Sexuality Jamie Heckert and Richard Cleminson (eds.), 2011 Queer Necropolitics Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, Silvia Posocco (eds.), 2014 Forthcoming: Power, Politics and the Emotions: Impossible Governance? Shona Hunter Law, Environmental Illness and Medical Uncertainty Tarryn Phillips After Legal Equality Robert Leckey (ed.) Global Justice and Desire: Queering Economy Nikita Dhawan, Antke Engel, Christoph H.E. Holzhey and Volker Woltersdorff (eds.) Chronotopes of Law: Jurisdiction, Scale and Governance Mariana Valverde Protest, Property and the Commons Lucy Finchett-Maddock Regulating Sex After Aids: Queer Risks and Contagion Politics Neil Cobb Subversive Property: Law and the Production of Spaces of Belonging Sarah Keenan The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority Aleardo Zanghellini This page intentionally left bank Queer Necropolitics Edited by Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman and Silvia Posocco First published 2014 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 a GlassHouse Book Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2014 Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, and Silvia Posocco The right of Jin Haritaworn, Adi Kuntsman, and Silvia Posocco to be identified as editors of this work, and the individual chapter authors for their individual material has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-415-64476-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-79830-0 (ebk) Typeset in Baskerville and Gill Sans by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK Contents Acknowledgements ix Notes on contributors xi Prologue xv SUNERA THOBANI Introduction 1 JIN HARITAWORN, ADI KUNTSMAN, AND SILVIA POSOCCO PART I Death worlds 29 1 We will not rest in peace: AIDS activism, black radicalism, queer and/or trans resistance 31 CHE GOSSETT 2 (Hyper/in)visibility and the military corps(e) 51 MICHELLE R. MARTIN-BARON 3 On the queer necropolitics of transnational adoption in Guatemala 72 SILVIA POSOCCO PART II Wars and borderzones 91 4 Killing me softly with your rights: queer death and the politics of rightful killing 93 SIMA SHAKHSARI 5 Black skin splits: the birth (and death) of the queer Palestinian 111 JASON RITCHIE viii Contents 6 Trans feminine value, racialized others and the limits of necropolitics 129 AREN Z. AIZURA PART III Incarceration 149 7 Queer investments in punitiveness: sexual citizenship, social movements and the expanding carceral state 151 SARAH LAMBLE 8 ‘Walking while transgender’: necropolitical regulations of trans feminine bodies of colour in the US nation’s capital 172 ELIJAH ADIV EDELMAN 9 Queer politics and anti-blackness 191 MORGAN BASSICHIS AND DEAN SPADE Index 211 Acknowledgements This book was born in hard times. This also goes for its publishing climate. It has been more than four years since the Queer Necropolitics panel at the American Anthropological Association in 2009 where our collective first began taking shape. We wouldn’t want to miss these four years and the sustained cross-Atlantic conversations on queer necropolitics that happened in them. Yet we also feel the need to honour the attrition and exhaustion we’ve often experienced, after writing countless emails and book proposals, knocking on and waiting in front of many doors, which is a place we share with other non-Ivy League intellectuals with unintelligible positionalities, excessive critiques, and not enough mentorship. When we started out, we were three British-based academics with little pedigree and sticky, hard-to-pronounce, harder-to-publish names. Our topic long seemed unpublishable – however trendy it has become since. But we did it! And we have learned things on the way: that gates may open and then slam shut again. That in these times of preemptive censorship, the task at hand is often not to live up to the false promises of meritocracy and academic freedom, but to cushion the blow, to not leave anyone behind, and to build as much community on the way as we can decently manage. Other forms of publishing are clearly needed. We thank our contributors – Aren Z. Aizura, Che Gossett, Dean Spade, Elijah Adiv Edelman, Jason Ritchie, Michelle R. Martin-Baron, Morgan Bassichis, S. Lamble and Sima Shakhsari – for believing in us, and for sticking with us, through the longest ever production process, and through many rounds of, at times painful, editing. We have learned much from your generosity and graciousness towards us as editors. We also thank Darcel Bullen, Onyinyechukwu Udegbe and Eric A. Stanley for joining us parts of the way and for continuing to inspire us. Others have given us imagined community through related projects, especially Anna Agathangelou, Sokari Ekine, Umut Erel, Andil Gosine, Suhraiya Jivraj, Jennifer Petzen, Johanna Rothe, Humaira Saeed and Tamsila Tauqir. We could not have done it without you. But most of all, we could not have done it without each other. During the four years each of us has gone through personal and professional turbulences – of job hunting and family crises, of cross-continent migration and sleep-deprived x Acknowledgements parenting, of writing deadlines, ill health and chronic pain,