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Sexuality in Times of Imperial War

When: Tuesday, December 19, 2023, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM
Where: GC101, Graduate Centre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus

A Conversation with Sita Balani and Nivi Manchanda

With the decline of pluralist discourses of inclusion, representation, and multiculturalism, liberal modernity appears to be on the defensive. We see this not only with the rise of far-right authoritarianisms, increasingly overt and direct forms of (non-)state violence, and the explosion of racialized moral panics, but also with the recent return of mass anti-colonial and anti-capitalist mobilizations the world over.

This conversation will ask how we should think about sexuality in these times of imperial escalation and war. How adequate are our analytics are for thinking about the relationship between sexuality, imperialism, and liberalism in the present? Is this moment — with its eruption of homonationalism, anti-terrorism, and islamophobia — a mere repetition of the post-9/11 period? Is the sexual order of racial capitalism enduring, shifting, or unravelling? And what are the implications for the anti-imperialist left?

This is a hybrid event, hosted at Queen Mary University. Once you have registered, a Zoom link to the live session will be emailed to you on the day of the event.

Speakers: Nivi Manchanda and Sita Balani
Chair: Alexander Stoffel

  • Nivi Manchandais a Reader in International Politics at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author ofImagining Afghanistan: The History and Politics of Imperial Knowledge and co-editor of Race and Racism in International Relations: Confronting the Global Colour Line. Nivi is the former co-convener of the BISA Colonial Postcolonial and Decolonial Working Group
  • Sita Balani is a Senior Lecturer in English at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race and the co-author of Empire's Endgame. Sita has published in Vice, Tribune, Novara, Salvage, Ceasefire, Wasafiri, and Open Democracy.

To hear about such events in the future, subscribe to Historical Materialism's Sexuality and Political Economy Network at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/wa-jisc.exe?A0=SEXUALITY-AND-POLITICAL-ECONOMY

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