Murderous Inclusions

Abstract

The aim of this Special Issue is to interrogate the intersection of violence and feminist and queer politics of inclusion. As critical voices within the ‘sexual citizenship’ debate have argued, middle-class and homonormative performances of politics and identity are often privileged in dominant frames of inclusion and belonging (Richardson Citation2000; Bell and Binnie Citation2002). Moving beyond an analysis of citizenship as limited to some and not others, our scholarly and political aim is to debunk the very move of inclusion – into citizenship, rights and political subjecthood – through sexuality. Instead of taking for granted the incorporation of sexual minorities as a certain pathway to progressive politics, this Special Issue asks how inclusions can be murderous by shifting the focus from their promise to their violences. Contributors to the issue reflect on the ‘intimate investments’ (Agathangelou, Bassichis and Spira Citation2008) surrounding, for example, international development aid conditionality and local, national and transnational regimes of governance of identity and desire; same-sex marriage reforms in the context of structural assaults against racialized and economically disadvantaged populations; sexual and gendered citizenship regimes and the pathologization, criminalization and/or violent erasure of sexually and gender-non conforming subjects from lower classes/castes; the uneven and ambivalent extension of state protection to individuals on the grounds of sexual and gender identity in a context of unchallenged heteronormativity; and alliances between neo-imperial free-market capitalism, slavery and political value struggles (see also Bailey, Kandaswamy and Richardson Citation2004; Smith Citation2007; Reddy Citation2011; Spade Citation2011 reviewed in this issue; Stanley and Smith Citation2011 reviewed in this issue; Ekine and Abbas Citation2013). In that respect, the articles brought together here decouple the link between inclusion, queer politics and justice, and explore the mundane articulation of such dynamics. They draw our attention to how a range of murderous inclusions shape contemporary formations of queer citizenship in various geopolitical locations across the world. By withdrawing the gaze from inclusion's seductive promises and looking at the deadly outcomes of some forms of inclusion, the issue returns the focus on those lives and deaths (queer or otherwise) that fall outside of inclusive citizenships and into erasure, violence and abandonment, and subsequently appear not to matter.