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Racial Regulations and Queer Claims to Livable Lives

DasGupta, Debanuj, DasGupta
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469623752

Abstract Details

2016, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
This dissertation traces the shifts in queer figures of life and death over the past three and a half decades in the United States, with particular attention to the dynamics of racialization in these transformations. It places the passage of the HIV ban on immigration (and its subsequent removal) as well as the intensification of post 9/11 national security practices in the context of neoliberal biopolitics. The dissertation argues that the formation of racialized abject figures, such as that of the transgender detainee and the immigrant female living with AIDS, predicates the shift within gay white men from being figures of death into figures of life. This dissertation assembles an unruly archive of queer politics in the US in order to delineate the ways in which certain kinds of bodies come to be marked as queer subjects of life while many others are relegated to death. I trace two crucial moments within which neoliberal biopolitics intensifies its grip over queer lives in the US. First, I situate the emergence of the AIDS epidemic as a kind of social trauma that operates as a form of melancholia within gay white men dealing with AIDS. The loss of lovers as well as sexual cultures is internalized within the ego formation of gay white men. I situate these as psychic processes through which white gay white men are disciplined as responsible subjects deserving of life within the gates of the nation-state. This respectable good life is signified through inclusion within institutions such as marriage and the US army. Contrary to the shifts within white gay men from figures of death into figures of life, the figure of the immigrant living with AIDS emerges as an absolute limit to life within the US. The passage of the HIV ban on immigration operates as a technology of regulation and institutes a certain kind of biopolitical racism. Secondly, then, the dissertation traces the figure of the transgender detainee as a figure of death in relation with the intensification of post 9/11 national security procedures. I situate the attacks on the Twin Towers as a form of national trauma that is played out through the securitization of space. The passage of the USAPATRIOT Act and the REAL ID Act attempts to securitize the US borders as well as everyday spaces. Heightened detention and deportation of immigrants is a regular feature of the national security state. Arguing that the sex/gender binary is fundamental to the political order of the national security state, I show how the immigrant female living with AIDS and the transgender detainee come to represent abject figures precariously standing at the gates of the nation state. Following theorists of trauma and abjection, I conclude with an examination of how the attempts made by the immigrant female living with AIDS and the transgender detainee to narrate their bodily trauma hold potentials for launching coalitional queer activism that can cut through projects of nationalistic neoliberal subject making.
Shannon Winnubst (Committee Chair)
Mary Thomas (Committee Member)
Lynn Itagaki (Committee Co-Chair)
Jennifer Suchland (Committee Member)
201 p.
Womens Studies
Neoliberalism; Biopolitics; Queer activism; LGBT; HIV; immigration; national security; racialization; trauma; abjection

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • DasGupta, DasGupta, D. (2016). Racial Regulations and Queer Claims to Livable Lives [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469623752

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • DasGupta, DasGupta, Debanuj. Racial Regulations and Queer Claims to Livable Lives. 2016. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469623752.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • DasGupta, DasGupta, Debanuj. "Racial Regulations and Queer Claims to Livable Lives." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2016. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1469623752

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1469623752
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.