Disability, Queer Exceptionalism and Setter-Colonialism

Last week, we continued our discussion about settler colonialism with a focus on Israel-Palestine. We discussed chapter 3 of Jasbir Puar’s book The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. The following ideas of this chapter stood out to us:

 

Analysis of settler-colonialism from the lens of bio-politics: Puar’s analysis can be distinguished from the majority of body of work on settler-colonialism in that it is not merely an investigation of material conditions, political territories or cultural ideologies but uses Foucault’s notion of biopolitics to investigate the complex ensemble of practices that aim to control population through the deployment of modern technologies.

 

The coloniality of disability: Puar looks at the under-studied theme of disability in the context of settler-colonialism and shows how the notion of health is constituted by normative colonial ideas that render the racialized colonized groups a target of biopolitical domination.

 

Problematization of queer exceptionalism: Puar unmasks the colonial dynamics that shape queer politics, especially in the way that it is deployed by imperialist and colonial states. The concept Pink-Washing points to the ideological mechanisms in which the supposed existence of queer liberation gives legitimation to the colonial state, masking the ways in which queerness is deployed in racially determinate ways that marginalize and oppress queer people of color.

 

We decided to continue this conversation by looking at other geographies in order to explore parallels that might help us establish new ways of thinking about decolonial solidarity.