The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti

by Erin L. Durban

Overview

Winner in the LAMMY Awards - Lambda Literary Awards, LGBTQ+ Studies category

Evangelical Christians and members of the global LGBTQI human rights movement have vied for influence in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Each side accuses the other of serving foreign interests. Yet each proposes future foreign interventions on behalf of their respective causes despite the country’s traumatic past with European colonialism and American imperialism. As Erin L. Durban shows, two discourses dominate discussions of intervention. One maintains imperialist notions of a backward Haiti so riddled with cultural deficiencies that foreign supervision is necessary to overcome Haitians’ resistance to progress. The other sees Haiti as a modern but failed state that exists only through its capacity for violence, including homophobia. In the context of these competing claims, Durban explores the creative ways that same-sex desiring and gender creative Haitians contend with anti-LGBTQI violence and ongoing foreign intervention.

Compelling and thought-provoking, The Sexual Politics of Empire examines LGBTQI life in contemporary Haiti against the backdrop of American imperialism and intervention.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252086847
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	01/03/2023
Series:	NWSA / UIP First Book Prize
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	936,723
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Erin L. Durban is an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Dedications

Introduction

1 Perverting Haiti: The Transnational Imperialist Discourse of the Black Republic as the Premodern Land of “Voodoo/Vaudoux”

2 The Missionary Position: U.S. Protestant Missionaries and Religious Homophobia

2008

3 Evangelical Christian Homophobia and the Michèle Pierre-Louis Controversy

4 “Zonbi, Zonbi” at the Ghetto Biennale: A Queer Act of Intervention against Postcolonial Homophobia

2010

5 The Sexual Politics of Rescue: The Global LGBTQI and Postcolonial Homophobia after the 2010 Earthquake in Haiti

2013

6 The Emergence of a Social Movement against Homophobia

Epilogue: The Transnational #BlackLivesMatter Movement and the Serialization of Black (Queer) Death

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"A captivating work of cultural history, offering a window into how the nation is perceived by foreign powers as well as how it perceives itself.An inventive and astute dissection of Haiti’s evolving notions of sexual identity." —Kirkus Reviews


“In The Sexual Politics of Empire, Erin L. Durban asks how same-sex desiring and gender creative Haitians pursue their world-making projects in the midst of the necropolitics of US empire, inviting readers to confront the politics of the present so as to sustain different possible futures.”—Janet R. Jakobsen, author of The Sex Obsession: Perversity and Possibility in American Politics

“Durban's pioneering work ventures where angels fear to tread. Context is everything. It is about the dance, a negotiation between our indigenous selves and westernizing forces where new identities live, between the 4 Ms—Masisi, Madivin, Makomè, Miks—and a global LGBT movement.”—Patrick Bellegarde-Smith, author of In the Shadow of Powers: Dantes Bellegarde in Haitian Social Thought

"Durban's book presents a penetrating analysis of homophobia in Haiti and links it to an ongoing imperial agenda of the US government. Her insight into the nature of same sex desiring and gender creative people and the challenges they face in a society fraught with interference from different religious sects as well as international LGBTQIA+ organizations is not only masterly, but she is able to make an incisive argument for the need to look beyond superficial reasons of race and gender." —Feminist Encounters

"A clearly written and moving new book grounded by extensive ethnographic research. . . As the first book-length enthography in the subfield of queer Haitian studies, The Sexual Politics of Empire marks a foundational contribution." —American Ethnologist

"As the first book-length ethnography in the subfield of queer Haitian studies, The Sexual Politics of Empire marks a foundational contribution." —American Ethnologist

From the Publisher

2023-01-05
A debut nonfiction book explores the effects of imperialism on Haiti’s sexual landscape.

A rash of homophobic violence erupted following the debilitating 2010 earthquake in Haiti. This tragic aftereffect was a result of accusations from some of the country’s evangelicals that God was punishing Haiti for the behavior of its queer community. After the earthquake, evangelical churches in the United States poured millions of dollars of aid into the nation while a much smaller stream of support arrived from American LGBTQ+ organizations. These latter resources helped transform Haiti’s sexual identity politics, creating an aspirational LGBTQ+ social movement in the country, complete with advocacy organizations, artists, and activists. Since then, both evangelical and LGBTQ+ communities have gained greater influence in the country, leading some Haitian commentators to variously assert that either gay sexuality or homophobia are foreign imports. With this work, Durban analyzes the extent to which the “homosexual/heterosexual” framing is indeed an import from Europe and the United States as well as the imperialist discourses regarding Haiti that make the country ripe for foreign intervention. The author is a deliberative and incisive writer, adeptly weaving history and politics together with the many layered traditions of Vodou and the concept of the zonbi (a spirit of the recently dead). Durban writes of a queer Haitian artist, the founder of a theater troupe, who performed a zonbi-inspired piece at the 2009 Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince: “He, like others who had grown up in evangelical Christian households, was particularly zealous when it came to the subject of Vodou, which he considered to be a radical space of belonging that was distinctly Haitian. Vodou, moreover, informed his queer, anti-imperialist politics.” While too academic for a general audience, the book is more than a primer on the status of LGBTQ+ issues in Haiti. It’s a captivating work of cultural history, offering a window into how the nation is perceived by foreign powers as well as how it perceives itself.

An inventive and astute dissection of Haiti’s evolving notions of sexual identity.

Kirkus Reviews