Nikita Dhawan

Homonationalism and state-phobia:

The postcolonial predicament of
queering modernities

The past decades have been ones of unprecedented sociocultural and legal
gains for queer politics, including the decriminalization of antisodomy
laws as well as the recognition of the human rights of sexual minorities
internationally. But these achievements have been accompanied by a severe
critique of queer racism, homonationalism and of the imperialist agenda of
global gay politics (Massad 2007, Puar 2007). The employment of gender
and sexuality as alibis for legitimizing violence against (religious) minorities
within Europe as well as military interventions in the non-Western world
has opened up fundamental questions regarding the future of feminism
and of queer emancipatory politics. Even as I support the critique of the
complicities of Western queer politics in neoliberal, imperial discourses
and condemn the instrumentalization of sexual freedom as a means to
sanction and harass minorities in the West as well as to stigmatize entire
populations in the global South as repressive and backward, I am also
extremely concerned and troubled by the state-phobia that plagues antihomonationalism politics. The sole focus on queer racism and homonationalism in the global North makes it difficult to address homophobic
and heteronormative practices and structures in diasporic communities
and the postcolonial world. In contrast to limiting postcolonial queer
critique to anti-homonationalism, I plead for a more complex, multidirectional politics that is directed at coercive practices across the postcolonial
divide. Thus, anti-imperialist and antiracist critique of queer politics must
be accompanied by a critique of reproductive heteronormativity within
postcolonial contexts. One without the other reinforces violent mechanisms of oppression. The present essay is an attempt to negotiate these

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complex and troubling developments in the field of postcolonial-queer

politics and is structured as follows: The first section engages with queer
racism and imperialism, and the critique of hegemonic homonormativity. The second section is an effort to chart a postcolonial queer critique
of reproductive heteronormativity. The concluding section addresses the
dangers of queer state-phobia.

Homonormativity and homonationalism

In recent queer scholarship the self-understanding of queerness as singularly transgressive of hegemonic heteronorms is being increasingly contested (Ahmed 2005: 512). It has been argued that liberal underpinnings
locate the queer subject as intrinsically liberatory, with the transgression
of heteronorms becoming the queer ideal. Everyone, irrespective of their
cultural, national, or other affiliations, is expected to confront the universal heteronorm in the same way, whereby queer agency becomes legible
only as resistance to heteronorms. This overlooks the complicity of queer
politics in other hegemonic structures (Puar 2007: 2223). These insights
have resulted in the critique of what is termed homonormativity, namely,
a form of queer politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative
assumptions and institutions but upholds and sustains them (Duggan
2003: 50). The term describes connections between contemporary queer
civil rights politics (for instance, in favor of the legal and social recognition of same-sex marriages), the growth of the pink economy through
the integration of queers into global consumerism (through, for example,
gay tourism and sex toy industry), the increased corporatization of queer
collectivization (for instance, pride marches), as well as the instrumentalization and complicity of queer politics in legitimizing militarization and
imperialism (Duggan 2003, Puar 2007). Homonormativity, it is claimed,
has transformed queers from figures of death associated with AIDS to
reproductive citizens associated with increased purchasing power, gay
marriage, and family values, thereby integrating them into the biopolitical

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53

optimization of life (Puar 2007: xii). It is lamented that individual sexual

rights have trumped global solidarities, whereby the neoliberal agenda has
taken the critical edge off queer politics, which is increasingly resulting
in hegemonic homonormativity. This raises questions like: Does queer
politics, especially located in the global North, reproduce class and race
hierarchies while claiming to contest sexual ones? What role do nationalism and capitalism play in queer organizing? What are the convergences
between corporatization and neocolonialism?
Geopolitical mappings of homophobia have resulted in the West being
marked as the site of secular modernity, with the East being the realm of
eternal religion, tradition, and despotism. The West becomes coded as sexually enlightened and tolerant, while the rest is condemned as a site of queer
oppression. It is therefore important to contextualize current debates about
queer sexualities and reproductive heteronormativity against the backdrop
of colonialism, during which foreign lands and peoples were seen to offer
the possibility of new sexual experiences, even as they were both exciting
and monstrous for the European imagination. Within colonial discourses,
deviant sexualities were Orientalized, culturalized, and racialized, with the
colonies functioning as porno-tropics for the European imagination a
fantastic magic lantern of the mind onto which Europe projected its forbidden sexual desires and fears (McClintock 1995: 22) The promise of sexual
adventure and pleasure rested on the assumption that non-Europeans were
immoral, perverse, and libidinous. The Orientalization of sexual difference
also served to define normative behavior in the metropolis.
In the past decades, the role of sexuality in the constitution of EuroAmerican subjectivity has undergone a dramatic change: hard-fought
struggles by feminists and queers have resulted in the legal and sociocultural recognition for nonnormative bodies, desires, and practices. This is
not to say that queers do not face discrimination or economic disadvantages in the labor market or that a postqueer world has been established,
where ones sexual orientation is irrelevant for citizenship and a matter
of free choice without consequences. Nonetheless, within a short span,
the queer subject has gone from being pathologized and criminalized to
being the marker for Euro-American sexual enlightenment and tolerance.
Interestingly, queer emancipations in Euro-America have been accompanied

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by racist and imperialist moves. Even as non-European contexts continue

to be Orientalized as the lands of harems, tantra, and kamasutra, where
sexual fantasies of the West are played out, these contexts are also condemned for being fraught with repression and piety. There has been a
proliferation of rescue narratives about homosexual refugees being forced
to seek amnesty in the more sexually enlightened cultures of the West with
queer Counterpublics (Warner 2002). The dominant Euro-American
discourses on sexuality emerge as a developmental narrative, which begins
with a closeted, prepolitical same-sex act that culminates in a liberated,
politicized, modern, gay subjectivity. The liberal logic asserts that the more
transgressive the sex, the more liberated it is. Thus, coming out becomes a
marker for cultural maturity and progressiveness, with one becoming part
of global gay brotherhood and lesbian sisterhood.
Within this logic, queer emancipatory politics becomes an occasion
to replay colonial constructions of the Orient as a site of regressive gender
and sexual oppression, in contrast to the egalitarian Western context, which
guarantees free sexual choice. Thus, just as the colonial rulers declared the
colonized to be unfit for self-rule on account of their barbaric attitudes
toward women, in queer times, gay and lesbian identities become markers
of Western modernity and Oriental repressiveness. The failure of queer
emancipations in these cultures legitimizes Euro-American ascendancy.
While colonial Europe condemned the Oriental worlds supposed
sexual licentiousness, the modern West sanctions its alleged repression of
sexual freedoms. Thus, even as homosexuality was criminalized in many
parts of the global South during European colonialism, Euro-America
displays historical amnesia as it constructs itself as sexually enlightened
vis--vis its non-Western Other. The construction of the West as a normative power has left a trail of violent and exploitative systems in the name of
modernity, progress, rationality, emancipation, rights, justice, and peace.
All the Orient can do is follow Europes example or risk the violence of
being forcibly civilized and modernized against its consent.
Neocolonial agendas are still at work, with, on the one hand, Evangelical
missionaries from the United States actively campaigning against homosexuality in postcolonial countries like India and Uganda, whereas, on the other
hand, migrants in Europe have to take mandatory immigration tests and

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integration classes to obtain citizenship. These tests examine the applicants

ability to perform as the ideal citizen by demonstrating their willingness to
integrate into European core values and norms of sexual freedom and tolerance. It is particularly noteworthy that this test was supported by Germanys
main LGBTIQ rights group, the LSVD (Lesben- und Schwulenverband in
Deutschland). This illustrates how emancipatory politics can be aligned to
reinforce hegemonic normative orders. Herein, the homophobic migrant,
and not the heteronormative society, becomes a hindrance to queer justice
(Harithaworn/Petzen 2011: 121). The underlying message is that Germany
needs to protect its gays and lesbians from homophobic migrants, especially Muslims. Sexuality is inserted into a security discourse about protection and threats. Queer struggles are no longer about inequality between
straights and queers, but rather between the gay-friendly Europeans and
the homophobic migrants (ibid). Such a discourse effaces the existence
of queer migrants, wherein migrants are interpellated as the heterosexual
Other to a gay rights agenda and as obstacles to sexual progress. As has
been pointed out by diasporic queer scholars, European gays and lesbians
secure their own insertion into the nation through the Orientalization of
homophobia and thus at the cost of migrants (ibid). The enfranchisement
of one group is at the cost of disenfranchisement of another.
Along similar lines, a regular feature in Western media is news about
the persecution of queers and other sexual minorities in countries like Iran,
Uganda and Afghanistan. Racist and imperialist queer politics, which
are complicit in Western self-representations as sexually enlightened and
modern vis--vis the sexually repressed and unemancipated Other, feed
into paternalistic rescue narratives where the white queer is trying to save
the brown queer from the brown homophobic (a la Spivak). Thus, the
politics of homonormativity exercises an influence beyond Euro-American
borders and claims transnational legitimacy through Eurocentric queer
politics, with such initiatives and policies finding support from the main
LGBTIQ rights groups all over Euro-America.
These and innumerable other such examples confront us with a challenge: What happens when critical emancipatory politics are instrumentalized to harass and discriminate against minorities, the presumption being
that religious and racial communities are more homophobic than white

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mainstream queer communities are racist (Puar 2007: 15)? Queer functions as an alibi for Western imperial projects erecting, on the one hand,
celebratory queer liberal subjects, while their focus on state coercion and
state violence in non-Western contexts negates any form of postcolonial
queer agency. Reading queer politics as limited to contesting heteronorms
effaces its possible complicities with other norms, such as those of race,
class, or gender (ibid).

The postcolonial art of self-critique

The critique of the deployment of queer politics as an alibi for discrimination within Euro-American borders as well as for military action outside
has been one of the most important contributions of recent postcolonial
queer scholarship. Even as I share the anti-homonationalist perspective, I
am wary of the unidimensional understanding of operations of power and
violence that underpins these positions. Power and violence do not flow
only from the Western liberal states; rather, they have multiple sources that
are deeply entangled. But before I outline my concerns with the state-phobia
of anti-homonationalist politics, let us very briefly touch upon feminist
postcolonial engagements with compulsory heteronormativity, which are
regrettably ignored in these discussions.
Feminist historians of colonialism have demonstrated how, from its
inception, anticolonial nationalism was predicated on the construction of
the middle class and of respectable sexuality, which were central to the formation of bourgeois nationalist subjectivities. Compulsory heterosexuality
in the production of gendered colonial, bourgeois, and religious nationalist
subjects has been central to postcolonial nation building (Gopinath 2005,
Rao 2010, Ekine/Abbas 2013). Bodies, desires, and pleasures become the
sites on which masculine religious and national collectivities are founded.
Both the empire and its antagonist, the anticolonial nation, are profoundly
heteronormative projects. If masculinity was the repository of colonial
authority, in contrast to the effeminacy and homosexuality of colonized

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men, justifying conquest and domination, the anticolonial, nationalist

endeavor has been one of recuperating lost native masculinity, which
paved the way for postcolonial heteronormativity. Despite homonationalism and the folding of queers into nation-building, nationswhether
Western or non-Western are deeply heteronormative. Heterosexuality is
ritually invoked to narrate the nation and keep it together.
Let me briefly sketch some interesting perspectives that illustrate the
heteronormative underpinnings of postcolonial formations. One of the
most important figures for anticolonial and postcolonial politics, Frantz
Fanon, saw homosexuality as a disorder, exclusive to Western peoples and
directly related to white supremacy, whereby for him the negrophobic
man is a repressed homosexual (Fanon 1967: 156). On the other hand,
Fanon imagines non-Western races to be free of homosexuality. Mercer
argues that Fanons fear and paranoia of the homosexual territory and his
avoidance of black homosexuality is a symptom of homophobic fixation
and disavowal in the political economy of masculinity in black liberationist discourse (1996: 125).
Similarly, the Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldua emphasizes in her
writings the necessity of simultaneously challenging the collaborative bonds
between native heteropatriarchy and colonial racism. She proclaims, As a
Mestiza I have no country, my homeland cast me out; yet all countries are
mine because I am every womans sister or potential lover. (As a lesbian I
have no race, my own people disclaim me; but I am all races because there
is the queer of me in all races) (Anzaldua 1987: 182). Hanif Kureishis
My Beautiful Laundrette, by simultaneously addressing issues of racism,
homophobia, masculinity, decolonization, communal identity, and diasporic ideologies, caused a scandal in the South Asian communities in the
United Kingdom who took exception to the depiction of queer interracial desire. These and several such examples unpack the inextricable link
between multiple nationalisms and collaborative patriarchies, which complicates any simple account of resistance and critique. Spivak explains that
reproductive heteronormativity is the broadest and oldest institution,
which predates both capitalism and socialism, and sustains colonial as
much as postcolonial structures, even as both colonizers and anticolonial
nationalists instrumentalized it (2007: 193).

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In the post-9/11 context, critical scholarship is increasingly focusing

on Orientalism, racism, and imperialism, while being relatively silent on
the issue of homophobia in minority communities. Furthermore, diasporic
communities are not granted any agency, positive or negative, and instead
are represented as passively being acted upon by an all-powerful monolithic
discourse from above. Given the efforts by queer diasporas to fight racism
in mainstream society and heteronormativity in antiracist politics, it is
irresponsible to neglect the entanglements of racism and heterosexism by
reducing one to being a cause of the other. Jasbir Puar, for example, claims
that heteronormativity in migrant communities is a result of heterosexist migration politics (2007: 148). While the two issues are related, they
cannot be simply conflated.
The exclusive focus on the West and its forms of domination and violence in the context of queer politics disregards the heterosexist violence
experienced by queers in/from the global South. Important work undertaken by queer diasporic scholars unfolds how migrant queers experience
discrimination and stigma from both their own communities as well as from
mainstream society. Queer migrants are caught between their own communities homophobic and misogynist tendencies and the new homelands
racialized, classed, Orientalist, and heterosexist attitudes and practices.
Unfortunately, these perspectives have been disregarded in recent discussions of queer racism and imperialism.
Another problematic example is Joseph Massads argument that the
persecution of homosexuals in the Arab world stems from their increasing
visibility and their identification with Western gay and lesbian cultural
practices. He sees the promotion of gay rights in the postcolonial world
as a conspiracy of Western Orientalists and speaks of a missionary campaign orchestrated by what he calls the Gay International. According to
Massad, It is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces
homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist (2007:
1623). He also claims that members of the middle classes who engage in
same-sex relations have adopted a Western identity, while others do not
feel the need to identify as gay and thus do not have the need for gay
politics (ibid: 1723). Sexual orientation is thereby privatized as a lifestyle
option, not a matter of political and economic consequence. Massad lays

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the blame for repressive reactions as well as any possible antihomosexual

legal legislation solely on transnational queer activism.
Marking certain practices and subjects as Western, thereby rendering them unintelligible, illegible, and illegitimate, has a long tradition in
native patriarchies. Interestingly, pro-Western regimes like Saudi Arabias
are among the loudest and harshest to condemn homosexuality as a white
disease and queer politics as a Western ploy to bring down Arab and Muslim
cultures. Thus, similar to the ideology of protection promulgated by hegemonic queer politics in the global North, which claims to carry out the
white mans burden of saving the brown queer, the argument here is that
Islam needs to be protected from the white mans disease. To reduce the
critique of homophobic violence in postcolonial contexts, where nonnormative sexual practices and identities are punishable with life imprisonment or even the death penalty, to an Orientalist impulse is an act of bad
faith. Critics of queer movements in the global South point to their use of
Western emblems of sexuality, such as rainbow flags and Pride parades and
the privileged background of various activists, as well as to discrimination
within the queer community on the basis of class, caste, and gender factors. Firstly, this is not unique to transnational queer activism. For instance,
the use of the color red by Marxists or wearing a cross by Christians are
traveling symbols (a la Said). Does this make all Third World Marxists or
Christians agents of imperialism per se? There is a double standard at the
heart of Massads argument, whereby individuals and communities that
embrace religious or political identitiesequally colonial legaciesare
deemed legitimate political agents, whereas those who embrace sexual
identities are condemned as Western. Religion itself is a colonial construct and Christianity was brought to Latin America, Africa, and Asia by
the missionaries. Does that imply that African or Asian Christians who
embrace this religious identity are simply Westernized and every believer
a victim of false consciousness? That they are simply passively consenting,
with no agency to appropriate, transform, and resignify imposed norms,
values, and identities? Colonial legacies continue to inform every aspect of
our subject constitution, from our needs to how we experience our desires
and pleasures. And this is not limited to our sexual identities. Thus, not
only are hetero/homo recent constructions emerging through the colonial

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experience, but equally, white/black, Christian/Muslim, urban/rural, et

cetera. To isolate only one particular identity formation and target a small
group of persecuted minorities as Westernized is more than problematic.
Massad does a great disservice by dismissing queers in the global South
as simply mendicants to neocolonial power. His critique of the transhistorical and transcultural deployment of essentialist sexual categories of identity
is compelling. However, he fails to acknowledge that Western and nonWestern sexual epistemologies are inextricably entangled and that there are
no uncontaminated precolonial identities, so that postcolonial subjects who
employ the term queer, just like they employ the term feminist or Marxist,
are not simply victims of false consciousness or unwitting agents of Empire.
Resistance is not always saying no to power; rather, as Homi Bhabha has
insightfully unpacked in his writings on mimicry, hegemonic norms have
to be negotiated, appropriated, transformed, resignified, and rearticulated.
In contrast to Massad, Puar for instance views (diasporic) queers of
color as primary targets of homonationalism (Puar 2007). However, the
representation of (diasporic) queers of color as simply victims of queer
imperialism masks their location on the privileged side of transnationality
and entails a disavowal of the messy complicity of postcolonial diasporic
subjects in neocolonial structures. Furthermore, Puar sees gay marriage as a
demand for reinstatement of white privileges and rights (2007: 29) as well
as attendant citizenship privileges (ibid: 30). She, of course, only focuses
on Euro-America (ibid: 20) and does not once mention the South African
case, even as her claims prove to contradict ground reality in at least some
European contexts, for instance, in the Spanish case, where most same-sex
marriages are binational and where queers of color acquire citizenship privileges through marriage. In fact, South Africa does not have a single entry
in her book, which is surprising, considering it is a postcolonial country
with one of the most progressive constitutions in the world with regard
to queer equality, even as there is the growing trend of corrective rapes
(sometimes under supervision by members of their families or local communities) and violence against black lesbians. With the primary focus on
Gay International and Western homonationalism, there is the risk of overlooking the well-funded campaigns in postcolonial countries by Western
profamily religious organizations to hinder progressive legislation or even

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to introduce coercive ones. The (re-)criminalization of homosexuality in

Uganda, Nigeria, and India with homophobic sentiments whipped up by
foreign evangelical groups, the introduction of American style defense
of marriage act in countries like Romania and the 2004 declaration of
the Doha international family institute, which brings together Christian
and Muslim civil society groups that reinforce normative ideas of family
and marriage, necessitates a more complex, multi-directional politics of
critique. Furthermore, sexuality is increasingly becoming a foreign policy
issue as demonstrated by the resurrection of cold war rhetoric in reponse
to Putins sexual politics in lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Another interesting issue is that although Puar focuses on the sexual
torture in Abu Ghraib, her main concern is the racial profiling of nonnormative migrant subjects in the global North. Thus, the Third World
falls even more deeply into shadow. Antiracist politics in the global North
are related to but are not continuous with the processes of decolonization in the global South. In most countries of the global South, queer
activists and theorists are struggling for the constitutional recognition
of sexual rights, including same-sex marriage, as an important aspect of
sexual justice, even as these rights are rejected by radical queer theorists,
mostly located in the global North, as politics of appeasement. And yet,
even if the law does not guarantee justice, one cannot not want rights.
Thus, arguments against the legal recognition of nonnormative sexual
practices, put forth as being commonplace concerns for assimilation in a
corrupt mainstream, need to historicize and contextualize these struggles,
whereby there are no natural alliances between queer politics (whether
black or white) located in the global North and in the global South on the
issue of sexual justice. In contrast to victimizing or celebrating queers of
color, it is imperative to acknowledge complicities in hegemonic orders,
instead of perceiving them as a matter of inconvenience. Taking inspiration from Spivak, I would argue against any romantic models of agency
and am skeptical of cheap urban radicalism (2007: 175) that sells itself as
anti-neocolonial resistance. There is a certain monopolization of agency
by those who, with First World citizenships and hard currency, can afford
to reject pragmatic politics in favor of more radical interventions in the
face of queer imperialism.

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State-phobia
One of my main difficulties with current politics of anti-homonationalism
and pink-watching is their rejection of any engagement with the state, which
is censured as a form of co-option and appeasement. They almost seem to
oppose the political agenda of providing non-normative sexualities with
social recognition and legal protection through rights and policies, because
this would mean acknowledging the existence of other forms of violence
that are not reducible to Western racism and imperialism even as they are
not entirely disconnected from them. This form of anti-statism denies
others some of the protections postcolonial queers enjoy on the privileged
side of transnationality, who live in states where homosexuality has been
decriminalized. Anyone who addresses the issue of homophobia in minority
cultures is simply racist and any talk of homophobic violence causes trouble
for sexual minorities in their communities or countries. Anyone who supports ideals of equality, freedom, or emancipation is labeled Western or
functions as a trophy for liberal and conservative forces. My response to
this position is that they do not take the consequences of colonialism seriously if they think decolonization is simply circumventing the legacies of
modernity and the language of rights, equality, freedom and emancipation.
While theorists like Puar rightly draw on Foucault to unpack how
non-normative sexualities are deployed in the biopolitical production of
different populations in relation to one another, namely, how European
queers are constituted in terms of requiring protection from the threat of
homophobic migrants at home and regressive Muslim cultures elsewhere.
At the same time, one of my primary objects against Puar and the politics
of anti-homonationalism is that they tend to dehistoricize, demonize and
essentialize the state reducing it to its penal functions. In her discussions
of Israeli pink-washing or decriminalization of homosexuality in India,
Puar gives the impression as if there is no difference between the US
and Germany, or between Israel and India. This dangerously disregards
Foucaults critique of state-phobia in his governmentality lectures, where
he simultaneously targets Marxists, ultra-left radicals, liberals, neo-liberals,
which consider the state as predator that must be contained and defanged

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(refer to Dhawan 2013). Rejecting Nietzsches image of the state as the

coldest of all cold monsters, Foucault views the state an effect rather than
cause of governmental practices and rationalities.
Foucaults historical investigations unfold how the experience with
fascism und totalitarianism during National Socialism and Stalinism led
to the rise of state-phobia in Europe. In order to reconfigure the relation
between government and society, the subsequent efforts sought to replace
the despotic state or police state through rule of law and constitutional state.
According to Foucault, since the late 1970s anti-statism rapidly became the
basis of liberal and left politics in the form of critique of securitization and
repressive apparatus. This translated for instance into uncritical solidarity
with soviet dissidents. Both amongst the liberals as well as amongst the
left, the idea of state as threat gained traction, particularly in the context
of fear of atomic war. Foucault problematizes the state-phobia of liberal as
well as left politics, in that they fail to distinguish between administrative
state, welfare state, bureaucratic state, fascist state and totalitarian state. He
distances himself from such an inflationary form of liberal and left statephobia. In contrast Foucault understands the state as the mobile effect of
a regime of multiple governmentalities that overlap, but also contradict
each other (2008: 77).
This dynamic and ambivalent function of the state is dangerously
ignored by scholars like Puar, whose critique of the state gravitates towards
state-phobia in that every attempt by queer individuals and groups to negotiate with the state is denounced as homonationalism. One must bear in
mind that there is a very fine line between critique of the state and statephobia and anti-statism. The latter is marked by a deep distrust of state
institutions per se. As Foucault compellingly argues, state-phobia forms
a foundational premise for the emergence of neoliberal governmentality
and conflates critique of state and critique of domination, with the state
being characterized as the origin of all violence.
The challenge for postcolonial queer theory is to formulate critique
of the state and critique of hegemonic heteronormativity without reproducing state-phobia. Finally liberal and left state-phobia is informed by
a Eurocentrism, in that a particular, specific European experience with
fascism is universalized thereby erasing different historical processes of

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state-formation and state-building in postcolonial contexts. Puars critique

of USA, Israel und India homogenizes very diverse anti-discrimination
policies and laws simply as politics of appeasement. This approach is risky
in its simplicity. Interestingly states like Saudi Arabia or Mauritania, where
homosexual acts are punishable with death penalty are spared in Puars
writings. Moreover, she equates the provisional decriminalization of same
sex acts in India and invalidation of sodomy laws in USA as examples of
homonationalism, discounting the differences between two very different
historical and regional contexts. The two legal reforms are a result of complex social and legal struggles that produce ambivalent and diverse effects,
which are questionably disregarded. If Europe universalized its norms and
epistemologies through colonialism, then decolonization is incomplete
without the deuniversalization and provincialization of Euro-American
experiences and politics. This would entail a nuanced historical analysis
of diverse configurations. In this context the specific German experience
with fascism and totalitarianism must not be imposed seamlessly on postcolonial contexts to promote a transnational state-phobic queer politics.
This would be disastrous.
This raises the question: Why is Foucaults critique of state-phobia
disregarded, not just by radical queer politics but even by Foucaultians
themselves. Here I claim that this comes from an inconsistency and ambivalence in Foucaults own position. Foucault diagnoses sexuality as a key zone
of government, as a fundamental object of regulation in liberal-capitalist
states. Securitization and sexuality, danger and protection, family and
nation function as stock phrases of governmental practices. Accordingly
when it comes to the issue of legislation of sexuality, one gets a sense of
Foucaults distrust of the state that he otherwise warns others to overcome. To give you a concrete example: In a round-table discussion in 1977,
Foucault made the controversial proposal to treat rape like a punch in the
face. Foucault recommends desexualization of rape as a strategy against
disciplinary power. The sexual definition of rape, he argues, reinforces the
genitalization of the body, thereby justifying the disciplinary targeting of
sexuality. He provocatively asks why an assault with a penis should be distinguished legally from an assault with any other body part. His aim is to
delink desire and crime, sexuality and the law in an attempt to immunize

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sexuality from becoming target of state intervention. At this point I detect

an inconsistency in Foucaults positions as he shows signs of state-phobia
(Dhawan 2013).
By reclassifying rape from criminal law into a civil offense, punishable
by damages, Foucault seeks to immunize sexual acts from state punishment
namely, incarceration of the rapists. Modern law, in his view, has the function of discipline, surveillance, and normalization. Through a legal redefinition of the crime, Foucault anticipates a shift in discourse that constructs
women as pre-victims, even as he seeks to protect male sexuality from
the disciplinary force of the law. Keeping in mind Foucaults reflections
on governmentality, one could argue that the establishment of women as
vulnerable in discourse and policy constitutes them as subjects of government. This rationalizes the regulation of their bodies and mobilities as well
as mobilizes paternalistic protection that reinforce processes of gender
formation. Foucault advances a powerful case for the desexualization of
rape that would place sexuality outside the purview of state intervention.
Even as one can understand Foucaults distrust of the judiciary, in his
attempt to remove sexuality from legislation, he risks misjudging the role
of law. Suggesting a departure from law, would imply parting from many of
the structures that protect one from violence and discrimination, that are
made possible through state monopoly on violence. In this regard Foucault
is just as state-phobic as the neoliberals and anarchists whom he critiques
for imagining a good society through a split of the state and civil society.
As Foucault himself warns state-phobia is deeply inscribed in liberal
and neo-liberal ideas of civil society. The wickedness of the state is juxtaposed against the inherent goodness of civil society, so that the aim is the
whithering away of the state. This anti-state-centric approach to political
power, locates radical politics in extra-state space of innovation. This is
why Puar and others reject pragmatic politics of same-sex marriage or antidiscrimination legislations. In contrast they support civil society campaigns
like pink-watching that increasingly deploy the strategy of surveillance for
shaming states into good behavior. Even as one critiques the harnessing of
gender and sexuality by neo-liberal capitalism, the rejection of all feministqueer politics oriented towards the state as part of a biopolitical agenda is
disingenuous state-phobic rhetoric.

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Nikita Dhawan

Postcolonial-queer-feminists are caught in an ambivalent, double-bind

vis--vis the state: On the one hand, the state has historically been the source
of violence and repression through the criminalization and pathologization
of non-normative sexual practices. And yet, queer strategies seek to instrumentalize the state to promote sexual justice. Even as the state is known
to perpetuate heteronormative ideologies, which are founding myths of
nations, the hope is that the state can function as a site of redress of gender
and sexual inequality. Despite the problematic track-record with regard to
sexual politics of all nation-states, whether European or non-European, it is
dangerous to disregard the immense political implications of state-phobic
positions, which are increasingly popular in radical discourses in the West.
As the recent re-criminalization of homosexuality in Uganda, India
and Nigeria demonstrate, negotiations with state are indispensable and
imperative for emancipatory queer politics in the global South. This is
not a plea for statism; rather, one must be aware of the dangers of the
replacement of state with non-state actors as motors of justice. Against
this background, the recent anti-statist stance within postcolonial queer
scholarship is alarming, as it ignores the importance of the state for those
citizens who do not have access to transnational counterpublic spheres to
address their grievances.
Decolonization, whether in USA, Israel or India, cannot be achieved
merely through a strategy of shaming the state. Rather in the GramscianSpivakian sense, it is imperative to enable vulnerable disenfranchised individuals and groups to access the state (Dhawan 2013). Accordingly, instead
of a for or against position vis--vis the state, the more challenging question
is how to reconfigure the state, given that its institutions and policies are
the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities. Thus the challenge is how to pursue a non-statephobic queer politics that at the same
time neither rationalizes the biopolitical state project nor makes the queer
bodies governable. In postcolonial contexts, the state is like a pharmakon,
namely, both poison and medicine. Postcolonial queer politics must explore
strategies of converting poison into counterpoison (Spivak 2007: 71).
Herein the ambivalent function of the state must be addressed. As
Pharmakon, the inherent condradictions must be engaged with: Violence
and justice, ideology and emancipation, law and discipline. If, following

Homonationalism and state-phobia

67

Foucault, the state has no stable essence, then it is marked by undecidability

or doubleness. The sole focus on the negative aspects of the Pharmakon,
namely the destructive and repressive traits, neutralizes and ignores the
enabling and empowering aspects. Thus postcolonial-queer-feminist politics must transform poison into remedy and formulate critique of the
state beyond state-phobia. A challenging task, but anything else would
be too risky!

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