Dr Sita Balani - Sexual Governance: From Indirect Rule to Deportation

The Centre for New and International Writing is the University of Liverpool's focal point for the study of contemporary and international literatures, for creative writing, and new writing in its many manifestations.

Centre for New and International Writing

Join Dr Sita Balani (KCL) for her lecture 'Sexual Governance: From Indirect Rule to Deportation'.

Through British colonial governance, sexual norms came to be viewed as the primary marker of cultural difference. The colonial elite understood the populations over which it ruled as composed of discrete ‘races’ with distinct cultures that were intrinsic to their identity, the inferiority of which evidenced the need for British rule. The strategy of indirect rule had particularly potent effects in British India where the ruling elite developed an obsession with sexual practices as the central example of culture, with distance from respectable, monogamous, and marriage-oriented British norms acting as an elevated marker of inferiority. This talk explores these histories of sexual governance to show the ways in which they inform governance in the postcolonial metropole, considering, in particular, deportions on the basis of sexual crimes. Sita Balani is a Lecturer in Contemporary Literature and Culture at King's College London. In her research and teaching, she explores the relationship between imperialism and identity in contemporary Britain. She is co-author of Empire's Endgame: Racism and the British State (Pluto Press, 2021) and author of Deadly and Slick (Verso, forthcoming). Her work has appeared in Vice, Feminist Review, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, The White Review, Open Democracy, Tribune, and the Verso blog. @sitainshort

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Dr Sita Balani - Sexual Governance: From Indirect Rule to Deportation

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