Queering Coloniality, Decolonizing Queerness

• In Event: Decolonial Feminisms: Democratic Challenges, Queer Counter-Narratives and Post-Human Futures

Abstract

“Why is Latin America So Progressive on Gay Rights?” reads the title of a dossier of articles in the New York Times in January 2014. In the dossier, several scholars of Latin American politics address what they view as the sweeping legal changes that have taken place in the region, including the passage of same-sex marriage or civil unions in six countries, new gender identity laws, and a range of same-sex partner recognition laws and policies. Some claim that this trend reflects a “queering” of Latin American states and societies, making the region relatively “advanced” and/or emancipated with regard to LGBT rights. Yet others view this progress as itself a form of colonizing sexual and gender dissidence.
This paper draws from previous discussions and research on hemispheric, decolonial approaches to understanding “queerness” in the Américas. In it, I ask, is the project of “queering” Latin American modernity an emancipatory, anti-normative project, one that leads to a decolonial future? Or is “queerness” itself, with its linguistic Anglophone origins and Eurocentric assumptions, implicitly an imperial project that serves primarily to institutionalize a Northern/Western-imposed sexual modernization agenda in the global South? How can we reclaim and maintain the emancipatory potential of “queering” modernity in epistemological and methodological terms, in various cultural and geopolitical contexts? How can we queer narratives of modernity in such a way to reveal their sexual, gender, racial, and class contradictions? How can we de facto decolonize queerness itself?

Author

• Amy C Lind, University of Cincinnati