Doing Gender and PCI Lecture on ‘The Return of Marxism in Queer Theory: Queer of Color Perspectives’
Utrecht University
May 18, 2017
Utrecht University
May 18, 2017
Roderick A. Ferguson (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA): ‘Queer of Color Critique and the Engagement with Western Marxism’


In recent years, leading institutions of global capitalism have begun to take activist stances against homophobia. For example, in response to Uganda’s passage of an Anti Homosexuality Act, the World Bank withheld a $90 million loan that was due to have been disbursed to the country. Like a number of multinational corporations, the Bank has also become invested in quantifying the “economic cost” of homophobia so as to make a “business case” for LGBT rights. Why have these institutions begun to inveigh against homophobia and why have they done so now? What are the terms on which the figure of the queer has come to be embraced as an object of concern by the global development industry and as a potential “stakeholder” by the business world? What understandings of “homophobia” underpin the putative “business case” against it? In addressing these questions, I shall attempt to offer a political economy of “homophobia” as it expresses itself in contemporary Uganda; in doing so, I hope to make visible the implication of the Bank in the production of the very affects that it now purports to oppose.
Practical information:
Date: May 18, 2017
Time: 11.00 – 12.30 hrs
Location: Drift 25, room 1.02
Chair: Rosemarie Buikema & Gianmaria Colpani