Queering Genocide as a Performance of Heterosexuality
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/03058298211033339 |
| Author | Patrick Vernon |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298211033339
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2021, Vol. 48(2) 248 –279
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/03058298211033339
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Queering Genocide
as a Performance of
Heterosexuality
Patrick Vernon
University of Birmingham, UK
Abstract
Genocidal violence centrally targets the social bonds that hold communities together.
In postcolonial contexts, it is well documented that social relations can be characterised
by heteronormativity. Furthermore, postcolonial scholars have done extensive work on
demonstrating the link between colonialism and genocidal violence. Responding to a gap
in the academic literature, this article interrogates the relationship between (post)colonial
heterosexuality and genocide. Seeing queer theory as also relevant to the study of non-
queer individuals’ experiences, this article argues that postcolonial genocidal violence can be
characterised by attempts to impede heterosexual group reproduction. Using the Rohingya
Genocide in Myanmar as an illustrative case-study, it argues that the emergence, character
and legitimisation of violence here depended on the construction of heteronormative subject-
positions. Furthermore, it argues that genocidal violence reinforces the subject-positions it is
rooted in, giving them the appearance of immutable facts. From this basis, the article concludes
that postcolonial genocidal violence can be read as a performance of heterosexuality.
Keywords
genocide, queer theory, Myanmar
Une lecture queer du génocide comme performance d’hétérosexualité
Résumé
La violence génocidaire vise principalement les liens sociaux qui unissent les communautés. Dans
des contextes postcoloniaux, il est bien établi que les relations sociales peuvent être caractérisées
par l’hétéronormativité. En outre, nombre de travaux de chercheurs postcoloniaux ont démontré
Corresponding author:
Patrick Vernon, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham,
Edgbaston, Birmingham, West Midlands, B15 2TT, UK.
Email: PXV467@bham.ac.uk
1033339MIL0010.1177/03058298211033339Millennium – Journal of International StudiesVernon
research-article2021
Original Article
Vernon 249
le lien entre colonialisme et violence génocidaire. À ce titre, cet article interroge la relation entre
hétérosexualité (post)coloniale et génocide. Considérant la théorie queer comme pertinente dans
l’étude de l’expérience des personnes non-queer, l’article soutient que la violence génocidaire
postcoloniale peut être caractérisée par des tentatives d’entraver la reproduction d’un groupe
hétérosexuel. En prenant l’exemple du génocide des Rohingyas au Myanmar, l’article soutient
que l’émergence, le caractère et la légitimation de la violence dépendent ici d’une construction
de positions sujet hétéronormées. En outre, il soutient que la violence génocidaire renforce les
positions sujet dans lesquelles elle est ancrée, leur donnant l’apparence de facteurs immuables.
Sur cette base, l’article conclut que la violence génocidaire postcoloniale peut être lue comme
une performance d’hétérosexualité.
Mots-clés
génocide, théorie queer, Myanmar
El genocidio como performatividad de la heterosexualidad:
Una lectura desde la teoría queer
Resumen
La violencia genocida ataca de manera central las relaciones sociales que mantienen unidas a las
comunidades. En los contextos poscoloniales está bien documentado que las relaciones sociales
pueden caracterizarse por la heteronormatividad. Es más, los académicos poscoloniales han
realizado un extenso trabajo para evidenciar los vínculos existentes entre colonialismo y violencia
genocida. Del mismo modo, este trabajo indaga en la relación entre la heterosexualidad (pos)
colonial y el genocidio. Señalando la importancia de la teoría queer para las experiencias de los
individuos que no son queers, este artículo sostiene que se puede describir la violencia genocida
poscolonial como un intento de impedir la reproducción grupal heterosexual. Recurriendo
al genocidio rohinyá en Birmania como un caso de estudio ilustrativo, se argumenta que la
emergencia, el carácter y la legitimación de la violencia dependen aquí de la construcción de las
posiciones de sujeto heteronormativas. Es más, se sostiene que la violencia genocida refuerza las
posiciones de sujeto sobre las cuales esta se basa, dándoles la apariencia de hechos inalterables.
Sobre esta base, el artículo concluye que se puede leer la violencia genocida poscolonial como
una performatividad de la heterosexualidad.
Palabras clave
genocidio, teoría queer, Birmania
Mothers were gang raped in front of young children, who were severely injured and in some
instances killed. Women and girls 13 to 25 years of age were targeted, including pregnant
women. Rapes were accompanied by derogatory language and threats to life, such as, “We are
going to kill you this way, by raping you”. Women and girls were systematically abducted,
detained and raped in military and police compounds, often amounting to sexual slavery.1
Genocidal violence centrally targets the social bonds that hold a community together. In
postcolonial contexts, these social bonds tend to be rooted in heteronormative logics
1. Human Rights Council, ‘Report of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on
Myanmar*’, United Nations Human Rights Council, September 2018, 9.
250 Millennium: Journal of International Studies 49(2)
2. See T. J. Tallie, Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in
Southern Africa (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020); Chris Finley,
‘Decolonizing the Queer Native Body (and Recovering the Native Bull-Dyke) Bringing
“Sexy Back” and out of Native Studies’ Closet’, in Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical
Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature, ed. Qwo-Li Driskill et al., (Tuscon:
University of Arizona Press, 2011), and Andrea Smith, ‘Queer Theory and Native Studies:
The Heteronormativity of Settler Colonialism’, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
16, nos. 1–2 (2010): 41–68, https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2009-012.
3. For e.g., see Dan Stone and Moses Dirk, Colonialism and Genocide (London: Routledge,
2008); Frank B. Wilderson, Red, White & Black Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); and Dylan Rodríguez, ‘Racial/Colonial Genocide
and the “Neoliberal Academy”: In Excess of a Problematic’, American Quarterly 64, no. 4
(2012): 809–13. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41809528.
4. Sedgwick describes queer as ‘the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances
and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s
gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically’. It
is this definition which guides my understanding of queerness, referring to an ontological
and epistemological rejection of all processes of categorisation. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick,
Tendencies (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), 8.
5. See Matthew Waites, ‘Genocide and Global Queer Politics’, Journal of Genocide Research
20, no. 1 (2017): 44–67, https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2017.1358920 and Lily Nellans,
‘A Queer(Er) Genocide Studies’, Genocide Studies and Prevention 14, no. 3 (2020): 48–68,
https://doi.org/10.5038/1911-9933.14.3.1786.
6. Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2007), 2.
7. My understanding of genocide as a performative act has been partially informed by Ferrales
Gabrielle, Hollie Nyseth Brehm, and Suzy Mcelrath’s piece ‘Gender-Based Violence
against Men and Boys in Darfur’, Gender & Society 30, no. 4 (2016): 565–89, 579, https://
doi.org/10.1177/0891243216636331.
which normalise heterosexual family units, binary understandings of sex and monoga-
mous intimate relations.2 Furthermore, postcolonial scholars have undertaken extensive
work to demonstrate the existence of genocidal violence as a product of colonialism.3
Given this, little has been said about genocidal violence as an expression of heteronor-
mativity in these postcolonial contexts.
A small number of queer4 scholars of genocide have done extremely well to uncover
heteronormative logics in genocide discourses and violence against queers.5 Despite this,
the role that heteronormative logics play in violence against non-queers, as well as queers,
has thus far gone unstudied. This article corrects this by characterising different stages of
genocidal violence as distinct attempts to ‘other’ targeted groups and destroy social bonds
amongst them. This occurs through the weaponisation of heteronormative logics, with the
ultimate goal of preventing the group from engaging in successful heterosexual reproduc-
tion, characterised by an essential focus on futurity.6 This, I contend, renders genocidal
violence a performance7 of (post)colonial heterosexuality. In making my case, I first out-
line the established literature surrounding the study of gender and genocide. Suggesting
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