Queering the Occupation: Settler Colonial Sexualities in the Era of Homonationalism

Ralph Haddad
2017 Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research  
This paper focuses on the relationship between settler-colonialism, nation building, and the policing of bodies via the white settler-colonial gaze. Overviewing the impact of settler-colonialism on sexuality, I move into a comparative analysis of settler colonialism as it impacted sexualities during Apartheid-era South Africa and those of Palestine under the ongoing Israeli occupation. I discuss the othering of "indigeneity" as opposed to the "modern" configuration of the settlers' sexualities
more » ... hat happened in what is now North America, and how it reconfigured gayness as whiteness, violently racializing, policing and re-socializing Indigenous. Using the comparative framework, I then transition to Palestine, where the Israeli occupation imposes violence upon, but also utilizes, queer Palestinian bodies to further its ongoing settler-colonial nation-building project through the coercive and imaginative labor of homonationlism and pinkwashing.
doi:10.36583/kohl/3-1-14 fatcat:vw66lv7cejb4lca7dcmidohdre