Queering state-sexuality relations : sodomy law in postcolonial Singapore

From the mid-1980s, scholars began to pay attention to the imbrications between state, nationalism and sexuality. This scholarship focused on the hegemonic power of the state in privileging “respectable” forms of sexuality and repressing “abnormal” forms in the name of nationalistic purity. I argue that while it is important to highlight the hegemonic power of the state over sexuality as a form of critique of state-inflicted sexual violence, it is also crucial to re-think state-sexuality relations as more complex and dialogic. I wish to advance a more critical, postcolonial perspective of state-sexuality relations that goes beyond the assertion of the way hegemonic states and nationalisms interpellate individuals into normative discourses and shape sexualities in a one-way process. First, this paper draws on queer theory, feminist sexuality studies, poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches to re-theorise state-sexuality relations. Second, it examines the mobilisation against the male sodomy law in Singapore to illustrate the ways in which the Singapore state can be re-imagined and conceptualised beyond “its” role as the arbiter of sexual rights. Third, I emphasise the necessity of a more nuanced understanding of state-sexuality relations: one that does not reproduce state power and hegemony in a counter productive scholarship