Decolonising Gender and Sexuality
Tutor: Liz Egan
CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of sexual violence and racist violence in the readings.
Decolonisation continues to be used in varied contexts within and beyond academia. Efforts to decolonise the curriculum or library reading lists have seen a greater emphasis on the diversity of subjects taught and the scholars that we read. But decolonisation also means challenging colonial systems of power and knowledge. As feminist histories sought to disrupt traditional narratives by not simply inserting women into the story but questioning the assumptions, structures, and power relations that underpinned those narratives, decolonial approaches have similarly sought to challenge white, heteronormative, Eurocentric narratives, including those of 'whitestream' feminism. Decolonising the history of gender and sexuality means grappling with the continuing experiences of colonialism while also rethinking the methodological approaches we might use.
Seminar Questions
- How have gender roles shaped, or been shaped by historical processes such as the slave trade and colonialism?
- To what extent is ‘heteropatriarchy’ or ‘heteropaternalism’ a Western concept?
- Marilyn Lake posited that in 1970s feminist historiography that ,“Gender, historians came to recognize, was implicated in the conception and construction of power itself.” What is the significance of this in the context of settler colonialism?
- What is the relationship between decolonization, power, and knowledge?
Core readings:
Maile Arvin, Eve Tuck, and Angie Morrill, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: Challenging Connections Between Settler Colonialism and Heteropatriarchy’, Feminist Formations (2013), pp. 8-34.
Haskins, Victoria, and Maynard, John, ‘Sex, race and power’, Historical Studies (2005), pp. 191-216.
Then choose at least one of the following:
Mimi Sheller, Citizenship from below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom (Duke University Press, 2012) <https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822393825> Ch. 3
Sabine Lang, 2016. “Native American Men-Women, Lesbians, Two-Spirits: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 20 (3–4): 299–323. doi:10.1080/10894160.2016.1148966
Indrani Chatterjee; When “Sexuality” Floated Free of Histories in South Asia. Journal of Asian Studies 1 November 2012; 71 (4): 945–962. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021911812001246Link opens in a new window
Further Readings:
Cecily Jones, Engendering Whiteness: White Women and Colonialism in Barbados and North Carolina, 1627–1865 (Manchester University Press, 2007)
Lake, Marilyn, ‘Women’s and Gender History in Australia: A Transformative Practice’, Journal of Women’s History (2013), pp. 190-211.
Akena, Francis Adyanga, ‘Critical Analysis of the Production of Western Knowledge and Its Implications for Indigenous Knowledge and Decolonization,’ Journal of Black Studies, (2012) pp. 599–619.
Clark, Madeleine, ‘Indigenous Subjectivity in Australia: Are we Queer?’, Journal of Global Indigeneity (2015), pp. 1-5.
Clark, Madeleine, ‘“No one will touch your body unless you say so” : Normativity and Bodily Autonomy in Australian Aboriginal Writing’, Transmotion, (2021), pp. 132–157.’
Hunt, Sarah, and Holmes, Cindy, ‘Everyday Decolonization: Living a Decolonizing Queer Politics’, Journal of Lesbian Studies (2015), pp. 154-172.
Lugones, María, ‘Toward a Decolonial Feminism’, Hypatia (2010), pp. 742-759.
Mahanty, Chandra Talpade, ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’ boundary 2, (1984) pp. 333-358.
Pierson, Ruth Roach, Chaudhuri, Nupur, and McAuley, Beth, Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
Russell, Lynette, ‘”Either, or, Neither Nor”: Resisting the Production of Gender, Race and Class Dichotomies in the Pre-Colonial Period’, The Archeology of Plural and Changing Identities ed. by Eleanor Conlin Casella and Chris Fowler (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2005), pp. 33-54.
Schiwy, Freya, ‘Decolonization and the Question of Subjectivity’, Cultural Studies (2007), pp. 271-294.
Smith, Linda Tuhawai, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd edn (London: Zed Publishing, 2021).