Translating the Queer: Body Politics and Transnational Conversations

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Translating the QueerBody Politics and Transnational ConversationsBy Héctor Domínguez RuvalcabaZed Books LtdCopyright © 2016 Héctor Domínguez RuvalcabaAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-1-78360-293-3ContentsAcknowledgments, Introduction: Troubles and travels of the queer, 1. Queer decolonization, 2. Queerness and the nation in peripheral modernity, 3. LGBT politics and culture, 4. Beyond LGBT struggles: Trans politics and neoliberal sex, Conclusion, References, Index, CHAPTER 1Queer decolonizationThe theoretical contributions to the studies of the colonial Latin American queer — or the queering of the colonial — in the conversations of Latin Americanist academia can be summarized as follows: a) queerness in Latin America is seen as a process of cultural translation whereby the multiplicity of pre-Columbian erotic practices is reduced to a normativized system of sexuality as a political strategy of control of bodies (or a biopolitics); b) colonizers deem nonreproductive sexualities sinful and condemnable/punishable, which in turn enables the emergence of hybrid, underground sexual practices that constitute an archive of the abject; c) indigenous third-sex theory reveals the conflict between a Western binary gender system and the three-sex system of some Amerindians, exposing homophobia as a colonial strategy; d) and a queer decolonizing proposal would aim not necessarily to reconstruct a native ancestral sex — gender system but rather to dismantle coloniality and disrupt its exclusionary and violent effects. In this chapter, my objective is to review some of the key ideas that have oriented discussions on the queer implications of coloniality.Coloniality and queerness: A discursive invasionSince the 1990s, several academic discussions have developed around the postcolonial condition of Latin America, mainly animated by readings of subalternist South Asian scholars but, more importantly, by the questions that emerged after the end of the Cold War and the advent of neoliberalism. Marxism, psychoanalysis, and structuralism were well established as the prevalent theoretical frameworks in the humanities and social sciences for understanding Latin American realities during the Cold War period. However, new questions emerged after what Jorge Castañeda (1993) calls the disarmament of the utopia. Long-term agendas (such as psychoanalysis, Marxism, and structuralism) that had informed the capitalism–socialism contradiction now began to address questions of gender and sexuality, along with race, disability, and other minority issues in Latin America. By the end of 1980s, studies on gender, sexuality, racial issues, youth cultures, and migrations had taken hold in academic environments with increasing levels of transnational exchange, paving the way toward a transdisciplinary, transnational, and subalternist mode of knowledge production. The epistemic turn from class struggle and alienation to an axis based on the colonial brought about the inclusion of questions about the subject, the body, and multiculturalism in Latin Americanist research agendas. Contradictions and differences between exogenous cultures are deepened in times of neoliberal politics and global reconfigurations of markets and cultures.Two events relating to bodies ignited the prominent academic incursion into the study of sexuality: the increasing number of serial killings of women in the continent made gender studies and feminist activism intensify their presence and influence in the public sphere, and the AIDS pandemic activated discussions on sexual identity and homophobic violence. These two immediate emergencies precipitated several forums that gathered academics from Latin American, European, and US universities, and those present began a transnational exchange addressing issues under postcolonial and subalternist theoretical reconfigurations. Unlike conventional disciplinary approaches, the emergent academic