Description
Book SynopsisC. Heike Schotten offers a critique of U.S. settler-colonial empire that draws on political, queer, and critical indigenous theory to reframe the concept of terrorism. She provides an anatomy of the War on Terror's moralism, arguing for a new interpretation of biopolitics that is focused on sovereignty and desire rather than racism and biology.
Trade ReviewIn this brilliantly iconoclastic tractate, Schotten poses the question of empire's desire. She returns, spectacularly, to Hobbes to disclose what we can no longer ignore: the settler colony has a moralizing hold on life itself, on time, and on desire. Schotten counters this 'punitive sanctimony' and its constitutive despair by offering uncompromising readings of Arendt and Edelman, deep reflections on native studies and on Islamophobia, and a remarkable genealogy of 'terrorism.' Throughout, she demonstrates, indeed, heightens, the urgency and significance of a queer political theory. This is a striking and original book, a stirring and energizing call for dissidence and liberation. -- Gil Anidjar, Columbia University
Queer Terror aims to bring together political theory and queer theory, and in this is very successful. It is extremely well argued and well written, defending an original and distinctive position that will be of interest to a wide range of radical scholars. Every few pages there is a jewel of an idea! The scholarship is excellent: texts are read carefully and deeply, while close readings are contextualized in larger literatures. The juxtaposition of political theory, queer theory, and decolonial theory is something we’ve been waiting for. -- Cressida Heyes, former Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality, University of Alberta
Queer Terror provides one of the best genealogies of the war on terror I have ever read. By reconceptualizing biopower,
Queer Terror insightfully reveals how Zionism, Islamophobia, and the war on terror have their origins in settler-colonial hatred of the 'savage.' Scholars and activists urgently need this book for its bold and brilliant map of U.S./Israeli empire as well as the radical queer possibilities for decolonization it inspires. -- Nadine Suleiman Naber, University of Illinois at Chicago
C. Heike Schotten's
Queer Terror masterfully synthesizes queer theory, political theory, settler-colonial studies, and native studies to explore the connection between the production of the 'savage' and 'terrorist' in settler colonial and imperial logics. In this innovative work, Schotten shows that what links them is a 'civilizational moralism of life and death' in which the biopolitical production of the indigenous and Islamic 'other' as the fundamental 'antagonists to life itself' is necessary for asserting the 'goodness and rationality' of settler sovereignty and U.S. empire. Through sophisticated readings of such thinkers as Michel Foucault, Thomas Hobbes, and Lee Edelman, Schotten makes the case that in this biopolitical context the radical, queer imperative is to refuse settler moralism by refusing the notion that the settler polity must survive. It means, given the choice set before us by settler sovereignty, to take the 'side of terrorism.' -- Kevin Bruyneel, author of
The Third Space of Sovereignty: The Postcolonial Politics of U.S.-Indigenous RelationsAn urgent and provocative book that is indispensable reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of terrorism, the War on Terror, Islamophobia, settler colonialism and empire, Thomas Hobbes, the liberatory potential of queer critique, and the relationship between these. -- Verena Erlenbusch-Anderson * Perspectives on Politics *
Queer Terror is a polemical must-read for scholars of biopolitics, native studies, queer theory, and the Global War on Terror. -- Kadji Amin, Emory University * Contemporary Political Theory *
In the face of settler sovereignty’s efforts to cure and conquer queers, terrorists, and savages who fail to fit the
biopolitical mold of 'the good life,' Schotten offers nothing less than a robust call to remain savagely incurable as a means of resisting US settler colonialism. * Theory and Event *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Biopolitics of Empire: Slavery and “the Muslim”
2. The Biopolitics of Settlement: Temporality, Desire, and Civilization
3. Foucault and Queer Theory
4. Society Must Be Destroyed
5. Queer Terror
Notes
Bibliography
Index
