SEXUAL TENSIONS OF POST-EMPIRE

• Published date: 01 July 2004
• Pages: 65-90
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1059-4337(04)33003-6
• Date: 01 July 2004
• Author: Katherine Franke

SEXUAL TENSIONS OF POST-EMPIRE

Katherine Franke*

ABSTRACT

In this essay Katherine Franke examines two contemporary cites in which

state efforts to eradicate the traces of empire and to resurrect an authentic

post-colonial nation have produced sexual subjects that serve as a kind of

existential residue and remainder of a demonized colonial past and absence.

Looking first at post-colonial Zimbabwe, Franke argues that President

Mugabe’s aggressively homophobic policies have played a key role in

fortifying his leadership as authentically African and post-colonial.

Franke then turns to current efforts by the Mubarak government in

Egypt to publically prosecute men for having sex with men. The Mubarak

government has used homosexual show trials, first in security courts, and

then in civilian courts, as a dry run for the reorganization of the Egyptian

court system’s jurisdiction over dissenters and outcasts.

When a people seek to put behind them an ignoble past characterized by

domination, exploitation or tyranny of the many by the few, they can be dogged, if

not haunted by the residue of that past. This residue can take many forms, and can

threaten the coherence, stability and forward-looking nature of the new states that

are brought into being during these periods of revolt and re-building. Residue can

also prove to be a quite productive prop to the masters of post-colonial statecraft.

In this essay, I explore twocircumstances in which the aggressive efforts of a state

∗Professor of Law and Co-Director Center for the Study of Law and Culture, Columbia University

School of Law.

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society

Studies in Law, Politics, and Society,Volume 33, 65–90

© 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

ISSN: 1059-4337/doi:10.1016/S1059-4337(04)33003-6

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66 KATHERINEFRANKE

to unwrite its colonial past have left smudges of erasure – not just any smudges,

but sexual smudges. In these two contexts, state efforts to eradicate the traces of

empire and to resurrect an authentic post-colonial nation have produced sexual

subjects that serve as a kind of existential residue and reminder of a demonized

colonial past and absence. They are useful residue, indeed.

We all know by now that sex is an especially dense transfer point for power

(Foucault, 1990). By this Foucault meant that sex is particularly well suited to the

projects of control, denigration, regulation or governance. It is an especially good

lever by which to wield power of various sorts. But it also may be the case that in

circumstances in which power is being transferred – from colonial to post-colonial

control, for instance – sex is not far from the scene. That is, in dense transfer points

of power, sex is likely to make an appearance. Foucaulttaught us that where there

is sex, there is likely power. But I hope to show here that where there is power,

there is likely to be sex.

Contemporary Zimbabwe and Egypt show us that at moments where state power

isbeingsolidifiedinnewforms,thestategainsanofficialsexuality, some sources of

threat are singled out and sexualized, and the management of sex becomes a tool of

governance that produces individual unfreedom in the name of expanding national

freedomorindependence.What we see in these two contextsaregovernmentefforts

to deliberately erase their colonial pasts in order to call forth a more authentic

indigenous present. Of course, this sort of erasure is impossible, in the sense that

these regimes cannot rewind the tape to a pre-colonial era and then hit the play

button anew. Nor can they either rhetorically or politically forge a rebirth of the

authentic nation purged of any trace of colonial involvementor investment. These

governments nevertheless persist in post-colonial or extra-colonial governance

aimed at indigenization. Their efforts can be understood as at once destructive and

productive – the projects to destroy the past leave a remainder, and excess–aset

of sexual perverts/abjects, whose sexual subjectivity is in large part the product of

the government’s use of sex as a tool of statecraft.

First, I look at the sexual politics of rule of President Robert Mugabe in Zim-

babwe. Mugabe has found the deployment of sex as a particularly useful wedge

issue in his mission of national freedom – that is, freedom from colonial rule by

the British. Mugabe has effectively undertaken brutally homophobic policies by

framing them within a post-colonial story that has enormous purchase with his

people, and, indeed, a story that has floated his political career.

Yet driving this deployment of a homophobic anti-imperialist progrom has

been a shrewd plan to disempower a rapidly growing civil society in Zimbabwe.

Mugabe’s repressive campaigns attacking homosexuals have supported an ever

radiating set of attacks against women, political opponents and white farmers.

One way to read this trajectory is to see that the assault on homosexuality as a