Queer Necropolitics

by Jin Haritaworn (editor), Adi Kuntsman (Editor), Silvia Posocco (Editor)

This book comes at a time when the intrinsic and self-evident value of queer rights and protections, from gay marriage to hate crimes, is increasingly put in question. It assembles writings that explore the new queer vitalities within their wider context of structural violence and neglect. Moving between diverse geopolitical contexts—the US and the UK, Guatemala and Palestine, the Philippines, Iran and Israel—the chapters in this volume interrogate claims to queerness in the face(s) of death, both spectacular and everyday.

Queer Necropolitics mobilises the concept of 'necropolitics' in order to illuminate everyday death worlds, from more expected sites such as war, torture or imperial invasion to the mundane and normalised violence of racism and gender normativity, the market, and the prison-industrial complex.

Contributors here interrogate the distinction between valuable and pathological lives by attending to the symbiotic co-constitution of queer subjects folded into life, and queerly abjected racialised populations marked for death. Drawing on diverse yet complementary methodologies, including textual and visual analysis, ethnography and historiography, the authors argue that the distinction between 'war' and 'peace' dissolves in the face of the banality of death in the zones of abandonment that regularly accompany contemporary democratic regimes.

The book will appeal to activist scholars and students from various social sciences and humanities, particularly those across the fields of law, cultural and media studies, gender, sexuality and intersectionality studies, race, and conflict studies, as well as those studying nationalism, colonialism, prisons and war. It should be read by all those trying to make sense of the contradictions inherent in regimes of rights, citizenship and diversity.

Genres: Queer, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Theory, LGBT, Essays, Politics

240 pages, Hardcover

First published July 12, 2012

Reviews

[Ai Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so insightful on so many levels. Each essay is careful to describe the framework they're working with (even if it means explaining Foucault, Agamben, and Mbembe over and over again) and the analysis is always tight and incredibly well done. Favorite essays include everything in the "Incarceration" section (especially the Lamble piece, but maybe that's because I have a giant intellectual crush on her,) as well as the Aizura piece. Obviously a necessary read if you're thinking about queerness and necropolitics.

[ashe · Rating 5 out of 5]

a very accessible collection. i was particularly convinced by aizura's point that necropolitics tends to get used polemically and that means missing out on how global capitalism finds ways to extract value even from those it wants to eliminate/exclude--through the prison industry, migrant work, sex work, etc. the posocco essay and shakhsari essay were also standouts.

[Amy Layton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a book that really made me think.  There've been plenty of other nonfiction books that challenge my view, that teach me new things, but this is the first one in a long time that made me set it down and just...reflect for a couple minutes.  On the bus, at work, in bed.  This challenged some preconceived notions, which for me is typically pretty easy for me to reconcile.  But this book made me really uncomfortable.  I don't like admitting that certain critiques and analyses in this book are true, but it is.  

For example, one chapter that stuck out most to me was a critique of the It Gets Better movement, started by Dan Savage.  The essay poses the question: "For whom does it get better?"  For white, middle class high schoolers, this means that their gayness will be easily overshadowed by their whiteness and upwards mobility once they graduate.  For gay people of color, their race will ensure that things do not get better--they do not have the privilege of upwards mobility, and they do not have the privilege of higher pay, not being stopped by police, and so on and so forth.  

 This book also challenges the notion that white folks are less homophobic than black folks, and challenges the notion that sex workers are not a part of a larger city community, a community cited as saying they don't want sex workers to be in their locale.  

Additionally, this book argues that so many social movements would not be where they are today if they didn't use the bodies of the dead as political tools.  Respect for the dead is an ideal, but not when their lives are already so disrespected.  Even more, the authors critique American nationalism, and its weird love for war and death despite the homosocial aspects of close living quarters that the army requires.  

Overall, this is a book that is so unlike anything else I've ever read, both in topic and in the way its made me readjust my own preconceived notions.  It's interesting, intriguing, and investigative.  

Review cross-listed here!

[Jordany]

PART I: DEATH WORLDS

Chapter 1. ‘We Will Not Rest in Peace: AIDS Activism, Black Radicalism, Queer and/or Trans resistance’ Che Gossett
Chapter 2. ‘(Hyper/In)Visibility and the Military Corps(e)’ Michelle R. Martin-Baron
Chapter 3. ‘On the Queer Necropolitics of Transnational Adoption in Guatemala’ Silvia Posocco

PART II: WARS AND BORDERZONES

Chapter 4. ‘Killing Me Softly with Your Rights: Queer Death and the Politics of Rightful Killing’ Sima Shakhsari
Chapter 5. ‘Black Skin Splits: The Birth (and Death) of the Queer Palestinian’ Jason Ritchie
Chapter 6. ‘Trans Feminine Value, Racialized Others and the Limits of Necropolitics’ Aren Z. Aizura

PART III: INCARCERATION

Chapter 7. ‘Queer Investments in Punitiveness: Sexual Citizenship, Social Movements and the Expanding Carceral State’ S. Lamble
Chapter 8. ‘"Walking While Transgendered": Necropolitical Regulations of Trans Feminine Bodies of Color in the US Nation’s Capital’ Elijah Adiv Edelman
Chapter 9 ‘Queer Politics and Anti-Blackness’ Morgan Bassichis and Dean Spade

the essays sound phenomenal. probably my most anticipated book this year. sadly it's an overpriced hardcover so hopefully there is a paperback soon after!

[Elen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn I picked a good day to finish reading this, considering "Queer Politics and Anti-Blackness" very much applies on a day where the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. Excellent book all around, definitely required reading for, well, everyone.

Edit: Damn how come I always remember important points after I already posted the review? There's maybe a bit too much jargon but most of the authors are very good at explaining what they're talking about when they say shit like "homonecrocapitalism" and frankly one of the articles (wish I could remember which) manages to concisely explain biopolitics in a way that allowed me to finally fully wrap my head around it lol.

[lee · Rating 3 out of 5]

dense and useful. a little dated atp but many of the analyses contained within the book as a whole have only become more topical & instructive... unfortunately. i'd be interested to see a new collection with more queers of color & queers under colonization & black folks to the front of the contributor list. shout out dean spade bc idk how useful yt analysis is re:queer necropolitics unless it's reaching towards its own destruction/abolition & decrying its many intrinsic/prolific violences... ha ha... big words alert... anyway the weakest parts of the book lie in analysis produced at the inner margins, rather than at the outer and/or un-mappable.
&, proceed carefully. i appreciated that eric stanley (#MYPROFESSOR), in atmospheres of violence, was explicit in acknowledging that the task of writing about violence & trauma is one that must be handled extremely carefully given that analyzing, writing & speaking of is also to invoke, necromance & replicate. so let's all be mindful / honor the bones of our many beloved dead who were definitionally made far, far more unsafe than we may ever be as tenants in the ivory tower / make our invocations useful and sharp if we must invoke. etc. that acknowledgment would have done good and arguably essential work in this book too

[Benjamin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Several of the chapters of this book are highly frustrating, they give quite good food for thought what a lot of them end up making points that are more or less passé, doing very little to go beyond previous work (in particular those bodies of literature that are being directly cited). It was an ok read, but nothing groundbreaking.

Also the cover design for this text is awful (just saying).

[mat bullock-betts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really dense and difficult to absorb throughout a lot of the book. On a positive note there were really strong, redeeming parts that really hit home for me that were much more accessible. Overpriced.

[hauntedandholierthanthou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Riveting application of Mbembe, very dense but very thoughtful overall.

[Mills College Library]

323.3264 Q382 2014