Dr. Sita Balani (King's College London) and Dr. Sivamohan Valluvan (University of Warwick)

‘Abuse by consent’: the intimate violence of racialisation

In 1979, a 35-year-old Indian woman coming to the UK to join her fiancé was stopped at Heathrow airport and subjected to a ‘virginity test’ – an invasive physical examination to ‘check’ she was a virgin and, therefore, a ‘legitimate’ bride. When the news broke, it emerged that ‘virginity tests’ were being conducted in British High Commissions across South Asia, as well as at the border at Heathrow airport. Asian women were assumed to be virgins until married and this assumption, rooted in colonial governance, was built into immigration policy, upheld by the enmeshment of bureaucracy and pseudo-science that one woman subjected to a ‘virginity test’ described as ‘abuse by consent.’ In these acts of routine violence, we can catch a glimpse of the central role of sexuality in how Asians in Britain are racialised.

As this example indicates, the legal, discursive, and experiential dimensions of sexual life – of being gendered, of desire, of romantic relationships, of family – cannot be viewed in isolation from race. I will offer a partial genealogy of the pivotal function of sexuality in the modern development of race, tracing the continuities and disjunctures between colonial and postcolonial governance. I will use this approach to suggest that, rather than an ‘intersectional’ approach to the relationship between race, gender, and sexuality, we need to consider the co-constitution of these categories as the basis for an assessment of state power.

Sita Balani is a lecturer in contemporary literature and culture at King's College London. In her research and teaching, she explores the relationship between imperialism and identity in contemporary Britain. Her work has appeared in Boundless, Feminist Review, Identity Theory, Open Democracy, the Verso blog, and Vice.

Nationalism and left dilemmas?

This talk will explore some of the theoretical premises by which to make sense of nationalism’s strange resilience. Resisting the tendency to read today’s nationalism as only reflex, the discussion will probe the longstanding ability of nationalism to monopolize the terrain of political community and to filter its attendant political anxieties. Central to this argument is the distinctive ideological cacophony – as spanning the liberal, conservative, neoliberal and left spectrum – that collectively overdetermines the appeal of today’s nationalism and its constitutive racial demons. Particular attention will be given here to the complicity of certain left factions and sensibilities. Not only is this an abject betrayal of working class struggle as imagined along anti-racist and cosmopolitan terms, but the opportunist left cannot even hope to gain on this terrain – as it is the political right that retains the more well-trained authority to always triumph if offered these terms. Some concluding remarks however about the threat nationalism poses to the right too will also be considered – whereby the right’s over-investment in nationalist rupture has unmoored it partially from a more affirmative defence of capitalist virtue and uplift. The fissures that therein arise are I argue conducive to a left revival, even if currently chastened, providing it can steer clear of the call for ‘progressive patriotism’ and its false temptations.

Sivamohan Valluvan is Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick. His Clamour of Nationalism was recently published with Manchester University Press.

Please join Myka for a glass of wine, water, or juice and a discussion about the job letter and how to write one. This informal session will include a brief discussion of what the job letter is meant to do, a guide to its general structure, and strategies for how to write a letter that gets you in the door. There will be lots of time for questions (and anxieties - which hopefully we can allay!).

We will be using the job letters up on our collective “job binder” (please email me if you require the password) as the basis for our discussion.

The hope is that following on from this session, participants will start drafting (or revising) their own job letters, which they will submit and then receive feedback on from colleagues in the department.

Everyone who is considering applying for an academic job is warmly welcome to attend, even if you’re just starting out. Job letters are not only quite useful things to write in that they help you to articulate your project and your identity as an academic, but they also take a bit of time to master and the more practice you have, the more ready you’ll be when a job you’d like to apply for does come up.

Please let Myka know if you’re planning to attend so she knows how much wine to buy and how many materials to bring. All are welcome.

Evelyn Araluen Corr and Jonathan Dunk (University of Sydney)

Sounding the Anthropocene