Sexualities, Intimacies, and the Citizen/Migrant Distinction

Abstract

This chapter takes its inspiration from Ann Laura Stoler’s argument in Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power that sexualities and intimacies were never merely metaphors, but material means, for creating and sustaining deeply unequal global relationships. Stoler’s focus is on sexualities and intimacies as the means to produce and sustain colonial projects and relationships. Today’s world remains deeply shaped by the histories and legacies of colonialism, global capitalism, and nineteenth/twentieth century processes of creating a global order organized into nation-states whose supposed ‘equivalence’ encodes, upholds, yet naturalizes inequalities among them (Mongia, 2007).

The micromanagement of sexual arrangements and affective attachments was … critical to the making of colonial categories and deemed … important to the distinctions between ruler and ruled. (Stoler, 2002, p. 8)

The point of [Michel Foucault’s] histories of sexuality … was not merely to know how power disciplined sexuality, sexual expression, or sexual identity, but to understand how all of these were the means by which power in a robust sense-power over life and death, power to cripple and rot certain worlds while overinvesting others with wealth and hope-is produced, reproduced, and distributed when we seem to be doing nothing more than kissing our lover goodbye when we leave for the day. (Povinelli, 2006, p. 10)

Illegal alienage is not a natural or fixed condition but the product of positive law; it is contingent and at times unstable. The line between legal and illegal status can be crossed in both directions. An illegal alien can, under certain conditions, adjust his or her status and become legal and hence eligible for citizenship. And legal aliens who violate certain laws can become illegal and hence expelled … shifts in the boundary between legal and illegal status might tell us a lot about how the nation has imagined and constructed itself over time. (Ngai, 2005, p. 6)