Homonationalisms and Criminalized Queers: A panel discussion about global sexual politics

This post was contributed by Dr Tara Atluri, visiting research fellow in the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities (BIH) and the Department of Geography, Environment, and Development Studies. Here, Dr Atluri gives an insight into her forthcoming public lecture on 16 March 2016

 

Supreme Court of India - Retouched

The Supreme Court of India

Slavoj Žižek suggests that the task of philosophy is not to solve problems but to reframe what we conceive of as problems. Rather than providing succinct answers, critical thinking involves asking questions. An assemblage of critical thinkers will gather to dialogue, debate, and question global sexualities and sexual politics today.

 

This panel discussion will question the politics of sexualities, focusing on key moments such as the decision made by the Supreme Court of India to uphold Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a colonial sodomy law that criminalizes queer sex and people. We will also address contentious issues such as European “gay conditionality” policies, which propose that financial aid to countries in the Global South should be dependant on the institution of LGBTQ rights. Finally, panellists will discuss `race,’ racism, sexualities, and citizenship. (The Better India article: ‘Renewed hope for LGBT community. Supreme Court will hear curative plea on Section 377‘).

In a time when “sexual freedom” is often inseparable within mainstream discourse from market based capitalist freedom, we will ask who put the “progress” in “progressive” sexual politics? In a time in which European governments act as benevolent saviors of queers in the Global South through aid conditionality proposals that threaten to further impoverish formerly colonized countries (where queerness was often originally made criminal through European colonial law) we will question who speaks on behalf of whom and why?

In our contemporary political milieu, where there is often little time and space for patient reflection and thoughtful discussion, this panel will offer the chance to enter into thoughtful dialogue and debate.

Panelists:

Mayur Suresh

Mayur Suresh is a lecturer at the School of Law, SOAS. His research focuses on ethnographic approaches to legal cultures. Previously, he was part of the legal team that successfully challenged section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (a colonial law that criminalizes diverse sexualities in India) in the Delhi High Court, and defended that judgment in the Supreme Court. Find out more

Dr. Alyosxa Tudor

Dr. Alyosxa Tudor is LSE Fellow in Transnational Gender Studies and Fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, University of London with focus on ‘Gendering Migration and Diasporas’ and ‘Queer Politics’. Their work connects trans and queer feminist approaches with transnational feminism and postcolonial studies. Alyosxa’s main research interest lies in analysing (knowledge productions on) migrations, diasporas and borders in relation to critiques of Eurocentrism and to processes of gendering and racialisation. In the past they have worked as an Assistant Researcher at the Centre for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies, Humboldt University, in Berlin (2008-2011), and were a Visiting Scholar at the Centre of Gender Excellence, Linköping University, in Sweden (2013-2014).

 

Alyosxa is the author of the 2014 monograph ‘from [al’manja] with love’, which revisits critical migration studies with the insights of postcolonial and decolonial approaches and carves out a perspective on power relations that brings together transnational feminism and trans (gender) politics. In their current research project on transnationalism, Alyosxa analyses links between conceptualisations of trans-gender and trans-national and aims for a critical redefinition of political agency. Through an analysis of theories on transing, passing and performativity in queer-, trans-, and transnational feminist knowledge production and illustrated by discursive examples from transgender communities and Romanian migrant communities they call for a conceptualisation of entangled power relations that does not rely on fixed pre-established categories but defines subjectivity through risk in political struggle. Find out more

Calogero Giametta

Calogero Giametta is a sociologist with a research focus on migration, gender and sexuality. More precisely, his work has concentrated on two forms of legal protection addressing non-EU migrants: anti-trafficking initiatives and the right of asylum (i.e. in France and the UK). He is interested in examining how these protection mechanisms, by being deployed as filtering instruments, follow the logic of sexual humanitarianism.

 

In so doing he questions the specific ways in which migration control operates through humanitarian interventions under neoliberal democracies. Between 2010 and 2014 his PhD research looked at the lived experiences of gender and sexual minority refugees, and on the discourses linking the politics of sexuality and the British refugee granting process. This included ethnography with gender and sexual minority asylum seekers living in the UK. Currently through his post-doctoral fellowship he is analysing broader humanitarian discourses and practices when gender and sexuality become rights-claiming objects within racialised migration regimes. Find out more

Tara Atluri

Tara Atluri has a PHD in Sociology. She is a lecturer at the Ontario College of Art and Design University. Drawing on research about the protests that followed the 2012 Delhi gang rape case and 2013 decision to criminalize queer sexualities in India, she recently published the book Āzādī: Sexual Politics and Postcolonial Worlds.

 

Tara Atluri is at Birkbeck College this term as a Visiting Research fellow in the Department of Geography, Environment, and Development Studies (GEDS). Find out more

Tara Atluri will deliver a BIH Public Lecture (titled “Homonationalisms and Criminalized Queers: A Panel Discussion about Global Sexual Politics”) on 16 March 2016 (6-8pm) Room 415, Malet Street Main Building. Book your place here

Find out more

Share

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.