Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Queer in the Tropics pp 47–68Cite as

Decolonial Queer

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

  • 633 Accesses

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Sociology ((BRIEFSSOCY))

Abstract

This Chapter aims to accompany the voyages of different theories by seeking to delineate the principal outlines of the encounter between queer theory and decolonial thinking. In a preliminary way, with no pretensions of reaching definitive answers, it formulates questions such as: could this encounter between decolonial thinking and queer theory produce something else that might be thought of as “decolonial queer”? Or are these theories incompatible, given that the term queer, rendered in English, signals the very sort of geopolitics that decolonial thinking attempts to counter? Is there any commonality between these proposals? What is the potential of this encounter, and what might it produce? And what sorts of movements would a queer decolonial reading design?

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   49.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   64.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    For an article analyzing how queer theory is produced, how it circulates, and how it is read in an Anglophone context, see Miskolci and Pelúcio (2017).

  2. 2.

    See the concept of diasporic ethnography in Ochoa (2014).

  3. 3.

    This passage was inspired by María Lugones’s concept of world-travelling, as found in Lugones (1987).

  4. 4.

    I have been very inspired by a number of different decolonial authors. As it is impossible to cite them all, I will name the following: Castro-Gomez (2007); Mignolo (2000, 2008); Segato (2013, 2014); Walsh (2004, 2009).

  5. 5.

    Examples include: Canfield (2009); Hawley (2001); Perez (2003). Approximations between feminism and decolonial criticism can be found in the work of Lugones (2005, 2007, 2011, 2012). For an analysis of the difference between post-colonial and decolonial thinking, see Grosfoguel (2006).

  6. 6.

    About elaborate critiques of coloniality starting from Latin America and the Caribbean, see Mignolo (1998).

  7. 7.

    On the question of translation, see Lugarinho (2001); Pelúcio (2014a); Rivas (2011); Sancho (2014). To accompany an analysis of translation and the travels of theories, see Möser (2013).

  8. 8.

    Agamben (2002, 2006) makes oblique mentions of colonization and of colonial prison camps, specifically in regards to the Spanish colonization of Cuba and the British colonization of South Africa (Shenhav 2012). Beyond this, in his essay Metropolis, he examines the tropes of colonial and post-colonial analysis (Svirsky and Bignall, 2012). But that is all.

  9. 9.

    I am indebted here to the theoretical movements of Haraway (2007).

  10. 10.

    This may be why Esposito (2010), the Italian philosopher, affirms: “I believe that a critical and self-critical image of the West can come to us only from outside the West, from a conceptual language that does not coincide with the West’s own and whose specificity lies precisely in its difference from the West”.

  11. 11.

    To accompany how indigenous queer theorists have affected work relating to indigenous sexuality in Brazil, see Fernandes and Arisi (2017).

  12. 12.

    Segato (1998) defines the Afro-Brazilian religious codex as the grouping of repeated and embodied themes and motives in the interaction between divinities in this pantheon. These themes and motives can also be found in patterns of social interaction, in ritual practices, and in informal conversation.

  13. 13.

    Consequently, political demands are not merely epistemological, but are also effected through an “ontological politics” (Mol 1998).

  14. 14.

    Within Trans* Studies – such as in Jay Prosser’s work – there is a strong critique of theory queer utilizing trans* peoples’ stories as examples of the instability of gender. I do not have space to discuss the theme here, but detailed critiques can be found in Prosser (1998). Cabral (2003) considers it indispensable to introduce the articulation of trans* theories and politics that both interpellate crystallized narratives and also introduce a demand for sexual citizenship in the first person.

  15. 15.

    Bicha, like “queer,” is used both pejoratively and as a term of self-affirmation for people of non-conforming gender and sexual identities. Its closest equivalent in American English would be somewhere between “queen” and “faggot.”

References

  • Agamben, G. (1998). Quelche resta de Auschwitz: l'arquivio e il testimone. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2002). Homo Sacer: o poder soberano e a vida nua. Belo Horizonte: UFMG.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2004a). Homo sacer: o poder soberano e a vida nua. Belo Horizonte: UFMG.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2004b). Estado de exceção. São Paulo: Boitempo.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2005). Lo abierto: el hombre y el animal. Valéncia: Pretextos.

    Google Scholar 

  • Agamben, G. (2006). Metropolis. Generation online. [Online]. Available at: http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpagamben4.htm. Acessed 20 June 2018.

  • Arendt, H. (1989). Origens do totalitarismo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bento, B. (2014). Queer o quê? Ativismo e estudos transviados. Cult, 193, 43–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourdieu, P. (2002). Les conditions sociales de la circulation internationale des idées. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 145, 3–8.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (1998). Bodies that Matter: On the discursive limits of sex. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cabral, M. (2003). Ciudadanía (trans) sexual. Artículo sobre Tesis Premiada, Proyecto “Sexualidades salud y derechos humanos en América Latina”. IESSDEH – Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. [Online]. Available at: http://reconstruyendoelpensamiento.blogspot.com.ar/2008/04/ciudadana-trans-sexual-por-mauro-cabral.html. Acessed 17 June 2018.

  • Canfield, L. (2009). Locating the Queer in Postcolonial/Decolonial Discourse: A Bibliographic Essay. [Online]. Available at: http://ramsites.net/~ercanfield/assets/locatingthequeer_oggel_2009.pdf. Accessed: 22 June 2018.

  • Castro-Gomez, S. (2007). La Hybris del Punto Cero: Biopolíticas imperials y colonialidad del poder en la Nueva Granada (1750-1810). Nómades, 26, 247–250.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chakrabarty, D. (2000). Provincializing Europe: postcolonial thought and the historical difference. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colling, L. (2015). Que os outros sejam o normal: tensões entre movimento LGBT e ativismo queer. Salvador: UFBA.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connell, R. (2010). Southern theory: The global dynamics of knowledge in social science. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Córdoba, D. (2007). Teoria Queer: políticas bolleras, maricas, trans, mestizas. Barcelona: Egales.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danielson, M. (2009). Homecoming queers: Desire and difference in Chicana latina cultural production. New Brunswick: N. J. Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Das, V. (2007). Life and words: Violence and the descent into the ordinary. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Driskill, Q.-L. (2010). Doubleweaving: Two-spirit critiques – building alliances between native and queer studies. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1–2), 69–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Driskill, Q.-L., Finley, C., Gilley, B., & Morgensen, S. (2011). Queer indigenous studies: Critical interventions in theory, politics, and literature. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Eaglestone, R. (2002). On Giorgio Agamben’s Holocaust. Paragraph: Journal of Modern Critical Theory, 25, 52–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Esposito, R. (2010). On contemporary french and Italian political philosophy: An interview with Roberto Esposito. Review, (75), 109–117.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, R. A. (2004). Aberrations in black: toward a Queer of color critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fernandes, E. R., & Arisi, B. (2017). Gay indians in Brazil: Untold stories of the colonization of indigenous sexualities. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Fieldhouse, D. K. (1967). The colonial empires: A comparative survey from the eighteenth century. New York: Delacorte Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grandmaison, O. L. C. (2005). Coloniser, Exterminer: sur la guerre et l’état colonial. Paris: Fayard.

    Google Scholar 

  • Grosfoguel, R. (2006). From postcolonial studies to decolonial studies: Decolonizing postcolonial studies: A Preface. Review, 29, 141–142.

    Google Scholar 

  • Guasch, O. (1998). La sociedad rosa. Barcelona: Anagrama.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haraway, D. (2007). Le temoin modeste: diffractions feministes dans l’etude des sciences. In L. Allard, D. Gardey, & N. Magnan (Eds.), Manifeste cyborg et autres essais. Sciences-Fictions-Féminismes (pp. 209–333). Paris: Exils, Essais.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hawley, J. C. (2001). Post-colonial, Queer: Theoretical intersections. Albany: Suny Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hussain, N. (2003). The jurisprudence of emergency: Colonialism and the rule of law. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Jiménez, R. M. (2002). Sexualidades transgresoras. Una antología de estudios queer. Barcelona: Icaria.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, E. P., & Henderson, M. G. (Eds.). (2005). Black Queer studies: a Critical anthology. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kalyvas, A. (2005). The sovereign weaver: beyond the camp. In A. Norris (Ed.), Politics, metaphysics, and death: Essays on giorgio agamben’s homo sacer (pp. 107–134). Durham: Duke University Press.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Lentin, R. (2006). Femina sacra: Gendered memory and political violence. Women’s Studies International Forum, 29, 463–473.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lugarinho, M. C. (2001). Como traduzir a teoria queer para a língua portuguesa (Vol. 1, pp. 33–40). Gênero.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lugones, M. (1987). Playfulness, ‘World’-travelling, and loving perception. Hypatia, 2(2), 3–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lugones, M. (2005). The coloniality of gender. Worlds and knowledges otherwise. [Online]. Available at: http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/wko/wko2.2genderanddecolonial.php. Acessed 20 June 2018.

  • Lugones, M. (2007). Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern gender system. Hypatia, 21, 186–209.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lugones, M. (2011). Hacia un feminismo descolonial. La manzana de la Discordia, 6, 105–119.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lugones, M. (2012). Subjetividad esclava, colonialidad de género, marginalidad y opresiones múltiples. In Pensando los feminismos en Bolivia (pp. 129–140). Conexión Fondo de Emancipación: La Paz.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mahmood, S. (2001). Feminist theory, embodiment, and the docile agent: Some reflections on the Egyptian Islamic revival. Cultural Anthropology, 16, 202–236.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). Walter Mignolo: una vida dedicada al proyecto decolonial. Bogotá: Universidad Central.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, W. (1998). Postoccidentalismo: El argumento desde América Latina. In S. Castro-Gómez & E. Mendieta (Eds.), Teorías sin disciplina: latinoamericanismo, poscolonialidad y globalización en debate (pp. 26–46). Miguel Ángel Porrúa: México.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, W. (2000). Local Histories/Global designes. Coloniality, subaltern knowledges and border thinking. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, W. (2006). Citizenship, knowledge, and the limits of humanity. American Literary History, 18, 312–331.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, W. (2007). La idea de América Latina. La herida colonial y la opción decolononial. Barcelona: Gedisa Editorial.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mignolo, W. (2008). Desobediência epistêmica: a opção descolonial e o significado de identidade em política. Cadernos de Letras da UFF, 34, 287–324.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miskolci, R. (2014a). Queering the geopolitcs of knowledge. In E. S. Lewis et al. (Eds.), South-North dialogues on Queer epistemologies, embodiments and activisms (pp. 13–30). Bern: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miskolci, R. (2014b). Um saber insurgente ao sul do Equador. Periódicus, 1, 43–67.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Miskolci, R., & Pelúcio, L. (2007). Fora do Sujeito e Fora do Lugar: reflexões sobre performatividade a partir de uma etnografia entre travestis (Vol. 7, pp. 257–267). Gênero.

    Google Scholar 

  • Miskolci, R., & Pelúcio, L. (2017). Ao Sul da Teoria: notas sobre Teoria Queer e a geopolítica do conhecimento. In E. S. Lewis et al. (Eds.), Queering Paradigms IV a: insurgências queer ao Sul do Equador (pp. 69–90). Berna: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mol, A. (1998). Ontological politics: A word and some questions. In J. Law & J. Hassard (Eds.), Actor network theory and after (pp. 74–89). London: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Möser, C. (2013). Féminismes en traductions: Théories voyageuses et traductions culturelles. Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muñoz, J. E. (1999). Disidentifications: Queers of color and the performance of politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Muñoz, J. E. (2006). Feeling brown, feeling down: Latina affect, the performativity of race, and the depressive position. Signs: Journal of Women and Culture and Society, 31(3), 675–688.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ochoa, M. (2011). Diáspora Queer: mirada hemisférica y los estudios queer latino-americanos. In D. Balderston & A. Castro (Eds.), Matute Cartografias queer: sexualidades y activismo LGBT en América Latina. Pittsburgh: Instituto Internacional de Literatura Latinoamericana.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ochoa, M. (2014). Queen for a day. Transformistas, beauty Queens, and the performance of femininity in Venezuela. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pelúcio, L. (2014a). Possible appropriations and necessary provocations for a Teoria Cu. In S. E. Lewis et al. (Eds.), Queering paradigms IV South-North dialogues on Queer epistemologies, embodiments and activisms (pp. 31–52). Oxford, EUA: Peter Lang Internacional Academic Publishers.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pelúcio, L. (2014b). Traduções e torções ou o que se quer dizer quando dizemos queer no Brasil? Revista Acadêmica Periódicus, 1, 68–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perez, E. (2003). Queering the Borderlands: The challenges of excavating the invisible and unheard. Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies, 24, 122–131.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Perez, E. (2014). Why do we need decolonial queer theories? Conferência apresentada no encontro annual da American Studies Association, Renaissance Hotel, Washington D.C., 28 Nov. 2014. Available at: http://citation.allacademic.com/meta/p314843_index.html. Accessed 20 June 2017.

  • Preciado, P. B. (2002). Manifiesto contra-sexual: prácticas subversivas de identidad sexual. Madrid: Pensamiento Opera Prima.

    Google Scholar 

  • Prosser, J. (1998). Second Skins. The body narratives of transsexuality. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quijano, A. (1991). Colonialidad y Modernidad/Racionalidad. Perú Indígena (Vol. 29, pp. 11–21).

    Google Scholar 

  • Quijano, A. (1998). La colonialidad del poder y la experiencia cultural latinoamericana. In R. Briceño-León & R. Heinz (Eds.), Sonntag Pueblo, época y desarrollo: la sociología de América Latina (pp. 139–155). Nueva Sociedad: Caracas.

    Google Scholar 

  • Quijano, A. (2000). Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina. In E. Lander (Ed.), La Colonialidad del saber: Eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. perspectivas latinoamericanas (pp. 201–245). Caracas: Clasco.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rivas, F. (2011). Diga ‘queer’ con la lengua afuera: sobre las confusiones del debate latino-americano. In Coordinadora Universitaria por la Disidencia Sexual (Ed.), Por un feminismo sin mujeres: fragmentos de un segundo circuito disidencia sexual (pp. 59–75). Santiago: Territores Sexuales Ediciones.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sancho, F. (2014). Desencuentros con lo queer/cuir. Cartón Piedra (Vol. 127, pp. 20–23).

    Google Scholar 

  • Saramago, J. (1997). Viagem a Portugal. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segato, R. L. (1998). The color-blind subject of Myth; or, Where to find Africa in the Nation. Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 129–151.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Segato, R.L. (2006). Qué es un feminicídio. Notas para un debate emergente. Mora, Revista del Instituto Interdisciplinar de Estudios de Gênero. Brasília: Universidade Nacional de Brasília. Série Antropologia, 401. Available at: http://www.feminicidio.cl/jspui3/bitstream/123456789/344/1/segato.pdf. Acessed 20 June 2018.

  • Segato, R.L. (2012). Gênero e colonialidade: em busca de chaves de leitura e de um vocabulário estratégico descolonial. E-cadernos ces, 18, pp.106–131.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segato, R.L. (2013). Ejes argumentales de la perspectiva de la Colonialidad del Poder. Casa de las Américas, 272, pp.1–5.

    Google Scholar 

  • Segato, R. L. (2014). El sexo y la norma: frente estatal, patriarcado, desposesión, colonidad. Estudos Feministas, 22, 593–616.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sharon, M. (2005). Queer theory for everyone: A review essay. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 31, 191–218.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shenhav, Y. (2012). Imperialism, exceptionalism and the contemporary world. In M. Svirsky & S. Bignall (Eds.), Agamben and colonialism (pp. 17–31). Edinburgh UP: Edinburgh.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, A. (2010). Queer theory and native studies: The heteronormativity of settler colonialism. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 16(1–2), 42–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Soto, S. K. (2010). Reading Chican@ like Queer: the De-mastery of Desire. Austin: University of Texas.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoler, A. L. (1995). Race and the education of desire: Foucault's history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suriaga, E. V. (2011). Comentarios al dossier ¿Cómo se piensa lo ‘queer’ en América Latina? Iconos. Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 40, 119–127.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walsh, C. (2004). Geopolíticas del conocimiento, interculturalidad y descolonialización. Boletín ICCI-ARY Rimay, 6, 1–2.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walsh, C. (2009). Interculturalidad, estado, sociedad: luchas (de)coloniales de nuestra época. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar.

    Google Scholar 

  • Yarbro-Bejarano, Y. (1999). Sexuality and Chicana/o studies: Toward a theoretical paradigm for the twenty-first century. Cultural Studies, 13(2), 335–345.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Preventive Medicine, Federal University of Sao Paulo (Unifesp), São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Pedro Paulo Gomes Pereira

Authors
  1. Pedro Paulo Gomes Pereira
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Pereira, P.P.G. (2019). Decolonial Queer. In: Queer in the Tropics. SpringerBriefs in Sociology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15074-7_4

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15074-7_4

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-15073-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-15074-7

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation