This week we spoke with Soy Rai about his thoughts on the loss of indigenous knowledge in India. We talked about the double erasure of his Nepalese ancestry by British colonialism and Indian nationalism, and how it complicates defining a 'queer' identity amidst these layers of cultural imposition. We see this as a perfect opportunity to continue last week's theme of the often overlooked relationship between colonialism and Western interventionism under the guise of 'liberation'.
Today we'll focus on how the language we use to express gender and sexual identities comes from a tradition of Western theory and activism, creating categories that can conflict with how local cultures understand the world and, if we're not careful, do more harm than good.
Let's start with the concepts of universalism and interventionism, which define the coloniality of Western incursions into the Global South. Universalism refers to the idea that the experiences and developments of Western societies are naturally applicable to the entire world. In particular, universalism arises from the notion that what constitutes citizenship - or even 'humanity' - with its associated categories, identities, rights and values, must be the same everywhere. The problem lies in the assumption that the development and understanding of this 'citizen' in imperial Europe was based around the only subjects with the power to define it: white, cis-straight, able-bodied men. Everyone else, by default, must fight to prove that they are worthy enough to receive just treatment. Interventionism is a related concept that explains how the colonial enterprise justifies advising, commanding, or taking over politics in foreign countries, resulting in political, economic, or military occupation, in order to defend the universalism of the values the West wants to uphold. As non-normative identities gain (legal) recognition of their rights in the imperial centers, these internal civil rights struggles are universalized and used as justification for intervening to "liberate" the newly recognized legal subjects.
As the notion of "universal human rights" has been globalized and the West's internal struggles for social justice have been exported to other contexts, activists in the Global South claim that Western interventions in the name of liberation often become a form of "neocolonialism" because they are imposed without regard to the local histories and particularities of the places they seek to "liberate." This is not to say that human rights are not worth pursuing, but their imposition from a top-down Western perspective is accompanied by an individualistic, identity-based politics that aligns with their capitalist and colonialist interests. This creates conflict in community-based cultures by imposing a single (foreign) path to justice and democracy. Particularly problematic is the concept of "progress" and the idea that human and civil rights form a linear scale used to measure the "civility" of a nation. This is especially dangerous when it is used to legitimize violent occupations.
The "civilizational" effort has been the main justification for European colonialism from the 16th century to the present.
In the context of queer rights, this is called 'pinkwashing' - a term coined by queer Palestinian activists - and is often used to justify violent policies towards countries in the Global South and immigrant communities in the West who are deemed undeserving of respect because they are perceived as less tolerant according to the standards that the West itself imposes on the world. As a result, Western governments can export queerphobia and misogyny to other parts of the world and wash their hands of their own discriminatory policies. More dangerously, queerphobia and misogyny become racialized, as pinkwashing justifies discrimination against people of color who are preemptively judged as already being naturally homophobic and sexist.
An important part of this problem is how we use words to categorize queer identities in a universal language to demand our rights. As we are learning this season, many indigenous languages lack words for "sex" or "gender" categories, and the reality of dissident sexualities and gender identities becomes impossible to describe because all of these categorizations are built around the historical context of Western Christianity, that is, as opposition to the "normality" of heterosexual and cisgender people.
Many indigenous cultures may not even identify feminine and masculine as separate concepts and do not use gendered pronouns in their language.
Moreover, in many traditions, gender non-conformity and homosexuality are not issues of personal identity but of social roles. In this sense, the very idea of conceptualizing these identities requires a way of understanding the world that is often outside the paradigms of local knowledge. As soon as a word is used, what it denotes comes into being. For example, if there was no need for the word 'homosexual' because in a particular context there were no distinctions made on the basis of sexual preference, when the word is imported from the West to define an identity, that identity becomes fixed in opposition to 'heterosexual'. In other words, what did not need definition because it was understood as an unremarkable part of reality suddenly becomes a recognizable object marked by its difference from the norm. The use of these words then provokes a new understanding, accompanied by the creation of new values and meanings that are already in conflict with the local.
The conflict in local languages and realities created by the importation of Western concepts to define queer identities adds to the struggles of queer people in these regions. As described by some of our guests, indigenous traditions have a rich history of queer identities forming a fundamental part of society, but this has been replaced with extreme marginalization. A big reason for this is the inherited values and laws left by European colonialism, but what helps maintain this today is the sentiment that queer identities are a Western import that needs to be resisted alongside neocolonial interventions. This is justified in part by the lack of vocabulary to describe queer identities in local languages and the paradigmatic conflict they create with their introduction, since they are immediately encountered as something that didn't exist before. As a result, the "anti-gay" rhetoric is incorporated into the "anti-Western" sentiment of revivalist movements for national sovereignty.
As always, queer people of color are left in a precarious situation. The solution is not as simple as rejecting the existing vocabulary. There is power in understanding each other's struggles, and we are stronger because of international solidarity. Practically speaking, it is impossible to end oppression without naming the oppressed. Perhaps this has led to the rise of the word 'queer' in activist circles, particularly among people of color, because of the natural ambiguity of the word, lending itself to adapt to different contexts and different meanings, and its openness to intersection with racial identities.
The word 'queer' that names this podcast is an English word that started circulating around the 18th century to denote something strange and outside the norm. By the 19th century, it was already being used to refer to homosexuals as a pejorative. It was only in the 1960s and 70s, amidst the civil rights movements in the US, that the word 'queer' started to be reclaimed by LGBTQIA+ activists, particularly people of color, with the famous slogan "We're here (because) we're queer!". But it was in the 1990s that 'queer' as an umbrella term for the LGBTQIA+ community started to be formalized in academia, also in the US, by Gloria Andalzúa and Teresa de Lauretis. This is how the academic field of "queer theory" was born. The word 'queer' was adopted in this context because of the literal meaning of the word: the strange, the weird, the undefinable. Moving away from the reductionist politics of gay and lesbian studies, queer theory embraced the ambiguity and fluidity of the word as a sign of resistance to categorizations and fixed definitions.
As Michael Warner said: "'queer' gets a critical edge by defining itself against the normal rather than the heterosexual."
Moving away from the reductionist politics of gay and lesbian studies, queer theory embraced the ambiguity and fluidity of the word as a sign of resistance to categorization and fixed definitions.
Naturally, imposing the word 'queer' would again be a form of neocolonialism. Listening to our guest on this week's episode, we understand how the word 'queer' can feel like the same imposition of the English language that has led to the loss of ancestral knowledge. So what is the solution?
Language colonialism and the globalization of queer liberation raise important concerns about cultural sensitivity, neocolonialism, and the imposition of Western concepts. Recognizing the limitations of our own perspectives and listening to the experiences and languages of local communities can foster a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of gender and sexual identity. By embracing diversity and avoiding the homogenization of language, we can build bridges between different cultures and strive for a more just and respectful world. Rather than dictating concrete solutions, we hope this will spark a conversation and help us think about strategies to decolonize our own vocabularies.
References
Anonymous (2018) “The Absence of a Queer ‘Mother Tongue’” In Plainspeak. Tarshi.net https://www.tarshi.net/inplainspeak/the-absence-of-a-queer-mother-tongue
John Lechte & Saul Newmann (2013) “Agamben and the Politics of Human Rights: Statelessness, Images, Violence”. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Joseph Massad (2002) “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,” Public Culture, 14(2).
Amar Wahab (2021) “Affective Mobilizations: Pinkwashing and Racialized Homophobia” in Out There, Journal of Homosexuality, 68(5).
Michael Warner (1993). Introduction in “Fear of a Queer Planet: Queer Politics and Social Theory”, Michael Warner, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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