Beyond Hetero-Modernity: Queering Universal Emancipation for Sexual Liberation
By Derefe Kimarley Chevannes, University of Toronto
This article theorizes hetero-modernity as generating the heterosexualization of modernity, enacting a colonial sexual order that attempts a queer-death project through the dialectics of (re)integration and elimination. It is, in essence, the colonization of sexual existence. The emergence of the hetero-modern world pursues queer death via multiple sites of violence—political, economic, and ontological—culminating in the systemic dehumanizing of queer subjects. This sexual domination produces and sustains manifold forms of anti-queer violence. As such, the article not only proffers the queering of modernity as a critique of sexuality but also provides an intersectional analysis with raced, classed, and gendered implications. By situating Black studies and queer studies in dialogic exchange, it contends that queering modernity necessitates queering universal emancipation for sexual liberation.