Empire and the Dispositif of Queerness

Authors

  • Robert Nichols University of Alberta

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i14.3890

Abstract

Thinkers heavily indebted to Foucault—such as Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Jodi Melamed and Jasbir Puar—are at the fore of a contemporary interrogation of queerness and racialized empire. This paper critically surveys this terrain, differentiates several strands of it, and attempts a theoretical reframing such that we may be better equipped to gain new vantage on the central problematic. I argue that the current conviviality of queerness and empire is best understood not only through a univocal ‘homonationist’ lens, but also requires situating in the context of multiple languages of civilizational superiority and liberal tolerance. In particular, it requires the deployment of arguments about the ‘benchmark of civilization,’ in which whole societies are ranked along a unilinear trajectory of development according to standards set by the most powerful among them. One relatively recent addition to the criteria of civilizational adjudication is the capacity of societies to ‘tolerate’ new forms of societal difference. In this case, I argue, the most important of these are the strange pairing of sexual and religious dispositifs.

Author Biography

Robert Nichols, University of Alberta

Robert Nichols is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta (Canada) and a Faculty Fellow in the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference at Columbia University (NY). He was previously a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy and, prior to that, a Trudeau Scholar in Political Theory at the University of Toronto, where he received his PhD in 2009. His areas of research specialization include 19th and 20th century continental philosophy (especially Heidegger and Foucault), as well as the study of imperialism and settler-colonialism in the history of political thought. Recent work of his can be found in Contemporary Political Theory, Philosophy Today and Law, Culture and the Humanities.

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Published

2012-09-14

How to Cite

Nichols, R. (2012). Empire and the Dispositif of Queerness. Foucault Studies, (14), 41–60. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i14.3890

Issue

Section

Special Issue on Foucault and Queer Theory