Queering Uncle Sam, the Caribbean, and the Academy: A Humanifesto for Us All
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0305829816659973 |
| Author | Eric Selbin |
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Forum: Faking It in 21st Century IR/Global Politics |
Millennium: Journal of
International Studies
2016, Vol. 45(1) 85 –90
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0305829816659973
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1. While this was not, alas, the final cover, the book begins: ‘This is the United States as I see it
today – a white headless body of indecipherable sex and gender cloaked in the flag and dag-
gered with a queer dildo harnessed to its midsection. This figure finds its global footing on
Caribbean islands and its hegemonic identity reflected in the Caribbean Sea’, Cynthia Weber,
Faking It: US Hegemony in a ‘Post-Phallic’ Era (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1999), 1.
2. Ibid.
Queering Uncle Sam, the
Caribbean, and the Academy:
A Humanifesto for Us All
Eric Selbin
Southwestern University, USA
Keywords
IR theory, sex, gender, sexuality, US-Caribbean relations, whitemalegitsinIR
I knew Faking It before it was published. Telling me about a potential cover for her then-
new project with what I remember as a gleam in her eye and an oddly flat, or perhaps just
studiously neutral voice, Cynthia Weber said, ‘so imagine “Uncle Sam” with each foot
on an island…maybe Haiti and the Dominican Republic, maybe Cuba and Puerto Rico,
I don’t know…wearing just his hat and coat and a giant strap on dildo’.1 I’d like to report
I said something clever or even uttered an equally casual ‘oh, yeah, imagine that’. Alas,
it was more along the lines of ‘uhm, yeah. No. I don’t think so. Wait. What?’. ‘Yeah, no’
and ‘wait, what’ have probably been the two lines I have most commonly inarticulately
uttered in the 30 or more years I have known Weber. To be fair, these eloquent, intelligent
exclamations started well before Cynthia shared the ideas that would become Faking It.2
Faking It is one of the most important and most un(der)appreciated IR (and well
beyond) books of the 21st century. In a profound sense it was one of the books that
Corresponding author:
Eric Selbin, Department of Political Science, Southwestern University, 1001 E. University Avenue,
Georgetown, Texas 78626 USA.
Email: eselbin@southwestern.edu
659973MIL0010.1177/0305829816659973MillenniumSelbin
research-article2016
Forum: Faking It in 21st Century IR/Global Politics
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