New Intimacies, Old Desires: Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times

623 Pages·2017·2.361 MB·English

by  Oishik Sircar (editor), Dipika Jain (editor)

OISHIK SIRCAR is an assistant New Intimacies, Old Desires revives the irresistible temptation to urgently N In the last 15 years, queer movements
e
professor at Jindal Global reimagine more just ways of a new world, better envisioning the w in many parts of the world have helped
Law School, O.P. Jindal Global futures of the right to be and to remain human. The collection opens I secure the rights of queer people.
new doors of perception of the age-old desire for a ‘cosmopolitan’ n
University, and a doctoral scholar queer jurisprudence. This book must, above all, be read as a powerful ti These moments have been accompanied
at the Institute for International m by the brutal rise of crony capitalism,
call for the unfoldment of thought ways and the pathways of achieving
Law and the Humanities, a critical solidarity for combating the neoliberal zodiac which render ac the violent consequences of the ‘war
Melbourne Law School, uncertain the itineraries of queer emancipatory politics. ie on terror’, the hyper-juridification
s
University of Melbourne. —Upendra Baxi, Emeritus Professor of Law, University of Warwick, , of politics, the financialization/
O
author of The Future of Human Rights (2002) managerialization of social
l
DIPIKA JAIN is an associate d
professor and executive director This remarkable book acknowledges that queer theory and activism D movements and the medicalization
have lived into an era in which gay rights can be human rights, in which of non-heteronormative identities/
e
at the Centre for Health Law,
states and corporations make themselves look good by promoting same- si New Intimacies, Old Desires practices. How do we critically read
Ethics and Technology, Jindal sex equality and marriage, and in which SOGI (Sexual Orientation and re the celebratory global proliferation of
Global Law School, O.P. Jindal Gender Identity) joins feminism as a normative project with some real s Law, Culture and Queer Politics queer rights in these neoliberal times?
Global University. political leverage. Dipika Jain and Oishik Sircar asked their contributors
in Neoliberal Times
to elaborate an ethic of responsibility in dealing with the resulting
complexity in contested sites spanning the globe. The resulting essays O
can help us live in a world in which emancipatory and erotic longings IS Edited by OISHIK SIRCAR and DIPIKA JAIN This volume responds to the
H
are strong enough to face the conflicts they engage and produce. IK complicated moment in the history
—Janet Halley, Royall Professor of Law, Harvard Law School, author SIR zubaan academic of queer struggles by analysing laws,
C
of Split Decisions: How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism (2008) A
R state policies and cultures of activism,
a
In surrendering notions of universality and rigid identities, New nd to show how new intimacies between
Intimacies, Old Desires seeks to open up space for the exploration of D queer sexuality and neoliberalism that
IP
sexuality, sexual subjects and gender formations that are no longer IK celebrate modernity and the birth of
A
ttehtihs erreegda rtdo, dteh-ihs ipstroorvioccizaetidv ea ncdo loleucttmioond oedp epnosl iutpic aslp afrcaem foerw moruklst.i pIlne JAIN the liberated sexual citizen, are in fact,
conversations about and around the concept of queer, and marks a (E reproducing the old colonial desire
significant contribution in the direction of critical and postcolonial DS of civilizing the native. By paying
)
analysis, especially in these neo-liberal times. particular attention to the problematics
—Ratna Kapur, Visiting Professor of Law, Queen Mary University of race, religion and class, this volume
of London, author of Erotic Justice: Law and the New Politics of
engages in a rigorous, self-reflexive
Postcolonialism (2005)
critique of global queer politics and
its engagements, confrontations, and
negotiations with modernity and its
investments in liberalism, legalism
and militarism, with the objective of
queering the ethics of our queer politics.
NEW INTIMACIES, OLD DESIRES

New Intimacies, Old Desires
Law, Culture and Queer Politics in Neoliberal Times
Editors
Oishik Sircar
Dipika Jain
ZubAAN
128 b Shahpur Jat, 1st Floor
New Delhi 110 04974 8
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.zubaanbooks.com
First published by Zubaan Publishers Pvt. Ltd 2017
Copyright © individual essays with the authors 2017
Copyright © this collection Zubaan 2017
All rights reserved
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ISbN 978 93 84757 74 8
Zubaan is an independent, feminist publishing house based in New Delhi with
a strong academic and general list. It was set up as an imprint of India’s first
feminist publishing house, Kali for Women, and carries forward Kali’s tradition of
publishing world quality books to high editorial and production standards. Zubaan
means tongue, voice, language, speech in Hindustani. Zubaan publishes in the areas
of the humanities and social sciences, as well as in fiction, general non-fiction and
books for children and Young Adults under its Young Zubaan imprint.
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt.Ltd.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction: Of Powerful Feelings and Facile Gestures xiii
Oishik Sircar and Dipika Jain
Chapter 1 1
Homonationalism as Assemblage: Viral Travels,
Affective Sexualities
Jasbir K. Puar
Chapter 2 28
beyond ‘Hate’: Queer Metonymies of Crime,
Pathology and Anti-/Violence
Jin Haritaworn
Chapter 3 73
Transnational Homo-assemblages: Reading ‘Gender’ in
Counterterrorism Discourses
Dianne Otto
Chapter 4 97
Gender Governance through Law: Populist Moralism
in Aspiring Democracies/Economies
Josephine Ho
Chapter 5 119
Post/Colonial Queer Globalization and International
Human Rights: Images of LGbT Rights
Aeyal Gross
vi NEW INTIMACIES, OLD DESIRES
Chapter 6 162
The Men of Blanket Boy’s Moon: Repugnancy Clauses,
Customary Law and Migrant Labour Sex
Neville Hoad
Chapter 7 190
Slim Disease and the Science of Silence: The Erasure of
Same-Sex Sexuality in ‘African AIDS’ Discourse, 1983–88
Marc Epprecht
Chapter 8 235
Selfhood and Archipelago in Indonesia: A Case for
Human Polyversality
Vanja Hamzić
Chapter 9 253
The Remote Control of the ‘I’ We Assume Wants to
Come Out: Sexuality and Governance in the Arab World
Sami Zeidan
Chapter 10 280
Queer Anti-sociality and Disability unbecoming: An Ableist
Relations Project?
Fiona Kumari Campbell
Chapter 11 317
In the Shadow of the Homoglobal: Queer Cosmopolitanism
in Tsai Ming-liang’s I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone
Ani Maitra
Chapter 12 351
Racism, Homophobia and Compulsory Able-bodiedness
in the Controversy over Inter-cousin Marriage
Ummni Khan
Chapter 13 386
Polymorphous Reproductivity and the Critique of Futurity:
Towards a Queer Legal Analytic for Fertility Law
Stu Marvel
CONTENTS vii
Chapter 14 410
baring and Veiling: Sex, Politics and National Identity
in Canadian Legal Discourse
Carolina S. Ruiz Austria
Chapter 15 469
Queer, beyond Queer?
Nishant Upadhyay and Paulo Ravecca

Acknowledgements
Editing, we have often heard, is a thankless job. The question,
however, is who expects to be at the receiving end of a thank you
when an editing project finally takes the form of a book. As editors,
after having committed over four years to this project, the publication
of this volume is an occasion where, irrespective of whether anyone
thanks us, we have many people and much else to be thankful to!
And thank we will—not as a genteel gesture or pretentious posture,
but to respect the fidelity of an everyday term that expresses our
deeply felt gratitude.
This project started out as a special double issue of the Jindal
Global Law Review (published in two parts in 2012 and 2013), and
we are grateful to Dr C. Raj Kumar for supporting our endeavour
as editors-in-chief to queer the pitch of a primarily doctrinal law
journal.
The chapters by Jasbir Puar and Josephine Ho were originally
delivered as keynote lectures at the workshop on ‘Human Rights
beyond the Law: Politics, Practices, Performances of Protest’
(2011), and at the conference on ‘Left in the Dark: Postcolonial
Conversations of Law, Neo-liberalism and Queer-Feminist Futures’
(2014) respectively. Oishik co-convened the first event, and we
jointly organized the second one. We thank Professors Puar and Ho
for accepting our invitations.
urvashi butalia, thank you, for having faith in the idea that the
journal’s collection of writings can be brought together in book form.
Your encouragement and enthusiasm through the process of putting