The best books on queering global politics
This article was originally published by Shepherd, a book discovery website where authors and experts share their favourite books. BISA has a partnership with Shepherd to showcase our members' books and this time it's the turn of Caitlin Biddolph. Look out for further articles by BISA members in the coming weeks. Try their bookshelf on international relations or politics to browse a wide range of recommended books.
Why am I passionate about this?
As a scholar committed to queer, feminist, and decolonial approaches to global politics, I’m always excited to read academic books that queer the discipline of International Relations (IR). When I first started my PhD, I already knew I was a feminist scholar, but it didn’t take long before I was introduced to queer scholarship, and soon enough, queer research was all I wanted to do! Queer research within and beyond IR inspired my own efforts to queer international law and transitional justice, to critique their cisheteronormativity and coloniality, but also to centre queer lives as agents of global politics.
I wrote...
Queering Governance and International Law
What is my book about?
My book examines the gendered, sexual, and civilisational politics of international law through a queer reading of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). I use the ICTY, established to prosecute atrocities committed during the 1990s conflicts, as an entry point for queering governance and international law, scrutinising both its cisheteronormative violences and its queer possibilities.
I trace how discourses of gender, sexuality, and civilisation underpin ICTY jurisprudence, constructing victims and perpetrators as variously feminised, passive, hyper‑heteromasculinised, and perverse, while judges, prosecutors, and the United Nations are positioned as paternal interveners. At the same time, I demonstrate how victims and survivors resist these hierarchies and mobilise international law as a mechanism for justice, however limited it might be.
The books I picked & why
Queer International Relations
Why I love this book?
This book was one of the first books I read on queer International Relations (IR) during my PhD, and it convinced me – quite effortlessly – that queer IR was the intellectual home for me.
Weber articulates a vision of queer IR that does not aim to define what "queer IR" is. But I can’t help but think her contributions in the book – which foreground gender, sex, and sexuality, and the plural ways the international hinges on logics of normal/perverse – did that for me anyway.
I love this book’s attention to the various analytical functions that queer can bring to IR: from the deconstructive methodology Weber cultivates, to the scrutinising of the simultaneously gendered, sexual, and racialised construction of the normal and/or perverse queer subject.
Out of Time
Why I love this book?
This book taught me about the necessity of doing queer research that not only challenges cisheteronormativity, but also colonialism and coloniality as well.
Rao’s book is a masterclass in transnational and transtemporal storytelling, narrating plural stories of the (post)colonial politics of queerness, gender, and sexuality. I was especially gripped by his chapter tracing the colonial spectres of atonement that underpin the British government’s apologies for anti-sodomy laws, which resonates with a broader homocolonial discourse Western countries have used to denounce former colonised countries as backward and queerphobic.
Queer IR can and should attend to these imperial histories and afterlives, and how they are underpinned by and uphold particular gendered and sexual norms. This book shows how global politics is a story about (post)coloniality and queerness.
Queer Conflict Research
Why I love this book?
I was privileged to read this book as chair of a book prize committee, a book which we shortlisted given its fantastic contribution to queer IR and conflict research.
Hagen, Ritholtz, and Delatolla have brought together a diverse collection of chapters that “tell the stories of LGBTIQ+ people in conflict not only as victims of political violence, but also as experts and agents of change."
I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the visual as queer method (Cooper-Cunningham) and queering the politics of knowledge in conflict research (Serrano-Amaya).
What a gift to read this carefully curated collection that not only spotlights queer lives in conflict but also amplifies the voices of queer scholars from diverse backgrounds who contributed to this important book.
Sexualities in World Politics
Why I love this book?
This was one of the first academic books I read that centred LGBTQ people as agents and actors of global politics, and to be fair, it’s probably one of the first within IR to do so.
As someone who first learnt about queer theory from the philosophical, abstract, and (let’s be honest) sometimes dense verbosity of poststructural queer thinkers, picking up Lavinas Picq and Thiel’s collection brought queer lives, in all their diversity, plurality, and embodiment, back into the picture.
Some of my favourite chapters include those on Pride events in the Amazon and the exploration of Indigenous experiences of queerness (Lavinas Picq), and the intersections of Muslim sexualities, modernity, and (neo-)colonialism (Rahman).
This book paved the way for more queer research, challenging the disciplinary confines of IR.
The Coloniality of Humanitarian Intervention
Why I love this book?
This is a book that I was gifted by a mentor.
I was so pleased to read the work of a rising queer IR scholar doing work that continues Weber’s foundational critique of the colonial and heteronormative logics of normal/perverse that underpin global politics.
In the book, Vernon focuses their attention on the colonial scripts of UK discourse on humanitarian intervention. I found myself agreeing at every turn with Vernon’s characterization of the UK’s scripting of "The Brutal Dictator," "The ISIL Terrorist," and "The British Self."
The book revealed to me the enduring power of colonialism and coloniality in global politics, and that queer IR must continue to scrutinize how these structures recruit queerness and heteronormativity in pernicious ways.
Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash
