In the Aftermath of Empire (so far)
I wrote a book this year!
It's currently with my editors for editorial and peer review on the manuscript. I'm looking forward, with the requisite amounts of trepidation, to seeing what they think. Come on Reviewer 2, be a friend!
It's due for publication in December 2026 with Bristol University Press.
The reason I'm calling it 'it' at the moment is that we're still figuring out a title. I've been referring to it all through as 'In the Aftermath of Empire: Coloniality, Gender, and Sexuality in Ireland and South Asia,' but that's not particularly SEO friendly and also not entirely accurate (the book does not include, for example, Bangladesh or Nepal, but does include the United Kingdom).
My as-yet-nameless book is a study of the regulation of gender and sexuality in four jurisdictions in the immediate and continuing aftermath of their part in the British Empire. For three - Ireland, India, and Pakistan - that part was as an occupied colonial territory, involuntary at the time and leaving deep scars on the sociopolitical landscape in the newly independent country. For the fourth - the United Kingdom itself - its character as a post-imperial state, having lost most of its colonies, also had a distinct bearing on how it has treated elements of difference in its population, including differences among gendered and sexual identities.
I posit the concept of 'cisgender coloniality' to bring together the political and philosophical mindset which was a hallmark of the British Empire and which has caused such lasting effects on the independent postcolonial jurisdictions. Here's an excerpt:
"Cisgender coloniality describes a politics which imposes coercive gendered norms - including with regard to the performance of sexual behaviours - on subordinated, usually racialised, subjects of a particular imperial power. Cisgender coloniality is not restricted by geography; it operates in the metropole as well as in the occupied colonial territories. Its hallmarks are the imposition of a compulsory binary heterosexual gender hierarchy, and a white supremacist hegemon, through lawfare and social policy. Cisgender coloniality operates especially through the demarcation of gender as the primary locus of control of the population.
Under cisgender coloniality, acceptable performance of gendered social roles also marks out the successful performance of whiteness and heterosexuality. Coercive and inescapable gendering is a function of power which is enacted at a population level, based on the social norms of the metropole. Such a politics functions as a disciplinary regime: it offers social legitimacy as reward for acceptable behaviour, and marginalisation as punishment. Both legal and social forms of citizenship can depend on satisfactory compliance with gendered norms. Legal citizenship is conferred through the laws of the colonial power, both at home and abroad. It can be withheld for any reason which the state sees fit to enact through the law. Social citizenship is a broader idea, one which takes in the acceptance and legibility of the individual or community at a societal level. Of course, as law and society are co-constitutive of one another, the conferral or denial of one form of citizenship has a consequential effect on the other. Legal citizenship creates an automatic right to belong to a particular state; its denial or removal alienates the individual from that state and renders them a stranger to the nation. Those who, through marginalisation or disadvantage, do not benefit from social citizenship and membership of the broader community, may find that any attempt they make to gain legal citizenship is not backed by the majority, nor the powerful. The dynamic of coloniality operates by weaponising this form of precarity - what is given by the goodwill of the state can be taken away again; what is predicated on the goodwill of society is dependent on social approval of an individual’s behaviour.
Cisgender coloniality also allows for state biopolitical control of persons under its governance through the registry of acts of conformity to the gendered heteronorm. Registries of birth, marriage, death, gender, and migration, allow for surveillance of the population’s activities along these axes, and present the opportunity for governmental actors to emphasise the aforementioned precarity of legal status. The various acts of life and living are also conducted and policed along racialised lines. The colonial state privileges those who most conform to its ideal of white cisheteropatriarchy, an intersectional hierarchy which includes all facets of life, from gender, sexuality, and race, to religion, caste, migration status, or reproductive status."
I am really looking forward to this seeing the light of day. I'll keep you updated!
