Anticipatory Political Homophobia & Global LGBT Human Rights: Un/mapping Transnational Discourses Around Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act

• In Event: 584 - Thematic Session. Transnational Sexual Diversity Politics

Abstract

This presentation un/maps the recent impasse between pro- and antigay mobilization around Uganda’s Anti-Homosextuality Act (AHA, 2009-14). Drawing on scholarly and social media sources, I offer a summary of the dominant discourse that accounts for the rise of anticipatory political homophobia in Uganda i.e. the increasing influence of (US) transnational evangelism that has precipitated a state-religious complex of “homophobia.” If transnational evangelism in Uganda generates the “homophobic” call that invokes reaction from global LGBT human rights advocates, I also critique this Western homotransnationalist response by analyzing its limited terms of operation and focusing on the ways in which Uganda is hailed into the biopolitical project of a Western queer modernity. I focus on the co-presence between homotransnationalist mobilization and “homophobic anticipatory countermobilization” as (re)organizing/suturing a global ordering project that is deeply invested in biopolitics and necropolitics. I suggest that the global flashpointing of Uganda in the context of the AHA incites further questions concerning the transnationality of neoliberal imperialism in queer times.

Author

• Amar Wahab, York University