Eleventh Global Studies Conference

Abstract

This paper un/maps the impasse between pro- and anti-gay mobilization around Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA, 2009-14). Drawing on scholarly and popular media sources in Uganda, Europe, and North America, I offer a summary of the dominant discourse that accounts for the rise of anticipatory political homophobia in Uganda, i.e. the increasing influence of (US) transnational evangelism that has precipitated a state-religious complex of “homophobia.” I explores if transnational evangelism in Uganda generates the “homophobic” call that invokes a reactive “gay human rights” response from global LGBT human rights advocates. I also critique this Western homotransnationalist response by analyzing its limited terms of operation, focusing on the ways in which this reiterates a call (to the global South) into the biopolitical project of Western modernity, while filtering out the complexities of postcolonial Uganda. In lieu of a conclusion, I focus on the co-presence between homotransnationalist mobilization and “homophobic anticipatory countermobilization” as (re)organizing/suturing a global ordering project that is deeply invested in biopolitics and necropolitics. I suggest that the global flashpointing of Uganda in the context of the AHA incites further questions concerning the transnationality of neoliberal imperialism in queer times.