This essay provides an analysis of the terms by which the question of extending civil marriage to same-sex couples has been posed, advanced, and resisted in Canada and the United States in the past few years. Denike draws on feminist theories of justice to evaluate the strategies and approaches of initiatives to reform the laws governing the state's recognition—and lack thereof—of personal relationships of dependency and care. She also examines the political opposition to such reforms and the challenges posed for (...) advancing human rights for gays and lesbians in the face of social and political prejudice against same-sex marriage. (shrink)

: This paper traces the political economy of the Christian concept of "evil" incarnate and its concomitant operations of sexual abjection and the repudiation of femininity, beginning with the early church's inaugural struggles to impose its monotheistic Law against maternal paganism. With attention to how "evil" has been deployed to sanction and sanctify the persecution of scapegoats, and particularly of heretics and witches, I examine the masculinist struggles for jurisdiction and control over women.

In this essay, Denike assesses the appropriation of international human rights by humanitarian law and policy of "security states." She maps representations of the perpetrators and victims of "tyranny" and "terror, " and their role in providing a "just cause" for the U.S.–led "war on terror. " By examining narratives of progress and human rights heroism Denike shows how human rights discourses, when used together with the pretense of self-defense and preemptive war, do the opposite of what they claim—entrenching the (...) sovereignty of Western imperialist states while eroding the conditions necessary for the recognition of the human rights of others. (shrink)

This essay provides an analytic review of Jasbir Puar’s book, Terrorist Assemblages (2007), situating her discussion and analysis of “homonationalism” within the context of recent developments in queer theory in the USA, and specifically, critiques of queer liberalism and gay imperialism; racial analyses of hetero- and homo-normative formations; and challenges to identity politics and representational frameworks that dominate LGBT studies. It takes up Puar’s interest in finding new methods and ‘reading’ practices to track certain shifts in LGBT politics and to (...) account for alignments between (white) queerness and normative, nationalist and imperial interests. Engaging with and expanding on her analysis, this paper discusses the challenge that Terrorist Assemblage poses to the identity categories that undergird human rights campaigns, and addresses the racist and nationalist sentiments that she locates within them. (shrink)

: This essay provides an analysis of the terms by which the question of extending civil marriage to same-sex couples has been posed, advanced, and resisted in Canada and the United States in the past few years. Denike draws on feminist theories of justice to evaluate the strategies and approaches of initiatives to reform the laws governing the state's recognition—and lack thereof—of personal relationships of dependency and care. She also examines the political opposition to such reforms and the challenges posed (...) for advancing human rights for gays and lesbians in the face of social and political prejudice against same-sex marriage. (shrink)

This paper traces the political economy of the Christian concept of “evil” incarnate and its concomitant operations of sexual abjection and the repudiation of femininity, beginning with the early church's inaugural struggles to impose its monotheistic Law against maternal paganism. With attention to how “evil” has been deployed to sanction and sanctify the persecution of scapegoats, and particularly of heretics and witches, I examine the masculinist struggles for jurisdiction and control over women.

In this essay, Denike assesses the appropriation of international human rights by humanitarian law and policy of “security states.” She maps representations of the perpetrators and victims of “tyranny” and “terror,” and their role in providing a “just cause” for the U.S.-led “war on terror.” By examining narratives of progress and human rights heroism Denike shows how human rights discourses, when used together with the pretense of self-defense and preemptive war, do the opposite of what they claim—entrenching the sovereignty of (...) Western imperialist states while eroding the conditions necessary for the recognition of the human rights of others. (shrink)

This paper offers a genealogy of anti-polygamy sentiment in North America, elucidating certain racist and nationalist formations that are implicit in the historical valorization and enforcement of heterosexual monogamy. It tracks the white supremacist and heteronormative logic that conditions the widespread disdain toward polygamy, and that renders it fundamentally different from familial configurations that are associated with national identity. Relating political and philosophical doctrines to the archival documentation and insights of contemporary legal and cultural historians of anti-polygamy sentiment, it elucidates (...) the racial Anglo-Saxonism of Hegel's ruminations on marriage and on the state, and highlights its reverberation within the political philosophy that justified the criminalization of polygamy and its supporting institutions in the nineteenth century and in contemporary immigration policy and same-sex marriage advocacy in Canada and the United States. (shrink)