Scholars often ignore an essential concept to American exceptionalism: it relies on abject “other” to reproduce its stature. 3 Nonetheless, the notion of expectionalism has been foundational to American nationalism and its justification for war. Reagan embellished a little, calling it a “shining city on a hill,” in his farewell address, and in turn characterized America’s Manifest Destiny as a moral obligation to humanity. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world. In 1630, Governor John Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony uttered the words Ronald Reagan would quote centuries later:įor we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The concept of American exceptionalism-that the United States is divinely sanctioned to bring civilization, liberty, and democracy to the rest of the world, with war if necessary-is not new. Through queer Deleuzian assemblages, however, the reorientation of space and time can dismantle the liberal structures that reproduce exceptionalist militarism. No longer are gays traitors to the state and indicative of American moral decline, as the construction of homonormativity makes gays an exemplar of American expectionalism. In turn, homonationalism reinforces America’s neoliberal militaristic hegemony, making sexual tolerance an alibi for necropolitical violence. The normalized acceptance of the “homophobic Muslim” utilizes colonial discourses to conflate the racialized terrorist with sexual perversion. Thus, 9/11 constructed the terrorist as queer.
Within the context of 9/11 and the “war on terror,” homonormativity transcends into homonationalism, wherein the state utilizes the gay liberal subject as praxis of sexual othering vis-à-vis Islamophobia. Inclusion inherently relies on the concept of exclusion, and this regulation of sexual morality has compartmentalized non-normative populations within a structuralist framework of necropower.
1 Inclusion inherently relies on the concept of exclusion, and this regulation of sexual morality has compartmentalized non-normative populations within a structuralist framework of necropower. While such advocacy has legally decriminalized and validated homosexuality, it has also accentuated state regulation of sexuality.
Through the intersectionality of dominant forms, namely whiteness, patriarchy, and affluent consumerism, these series of political moments constitute homonormativity. Although paradoxical, when one analyzes recent LGBTQ advocacy, with its rhetoric of liberal normativity and visibility, the gay rights movement has chosen inclusion over revolution. Same-sex marriage killed the radical queer. As the construction of homonormativity was in reaction to the terrorist body, sexual tolerance becomes an alibi for necropolitical violence and homonationalism becomes the justification for the United States’ neoliberal, militaristic hegemony. When one analyzes recent LGBTQ advocacy, with its rhetoric of liberal normativity and visibility, the gay rights movement has chosen inclusion over revolution.