The Erotic Life of Racism

Retro Racism: <i>Colonial Ignorance and Racialized Affective Consumption in Danish Public Culture</i>

“…By suggesting that 'it's nice to enjoy things less than we do', Kincaid calls on us to analyze how habitual forms of consumption and pleasure risk sustaining and reproducing hierarchical power structures related to gender, sexuality, race and class. Kincaid's reminder of how the pleasures of some often depend on the pain and suffering of others not only reads as a call to interrogate the 'erotic life of racism', in Holland's suggestive phrase (Holland 2012), but also the affective politics that allow pleasure and enjoyment to appear as autonomous entities untethered from historical and political power struggles. It is not surprising that people get defensive when confronted with criticism that disturbs habitual patterns of consumption and enjoyment.…”

The Hirschfeld Archives : Violence, Death, and Modern Queer Culture

“…108 For instance, in a chapter on homosexuality in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon countries and their colonies, he claimed, "The differences appear minimal compared to what is shared" by homosexual men and women. 109 He argued that every human develops in "intermediate sexual stages." This notion was premised, in Anna Katharina Schaffner's words, on the "ontogenetic bisexuality of the embryo," which might then grow via developmental disturbances into a whole range of different kinds of sexual intermediaries.…”

“…108 While he still portrayed the "loyal" and "affectionate" Tao Li as a "pupil," he added a note in English to the German text that expands on their close relationship and anticipates a precarious future. 109 Formally written, signed and dated in the manner of a will, it pronounces Tao Li to be Hirschfeld's beneficiary and asks that, in the event of Hirschfeld's death during his travels, Tao Li take his ashes to Berlin to hand them over to Karl Giese and Fritz Haupstein at the institute. Hirschfeld further stipulates that Tao Li "shall keep everything I have with me, especially also my manuscripts and money," concluding with the plea that Tao Li be "considered in every way as a quite confidential friend."…”

“…racism has its own erotic life." 109 Holland's observation on "the erotic life of racism," by which she means the paradoxical intimacy of racist acts and gestures, complicates understanding of the issues at stake in the Nazi raid on the Institute of Sexual Science. It helps us see these acts not merely as part of the general group psychology of Nazi totalitarianism but more specifically as evidence of how antisemitism and homophobia together dictated the actions during the attack on the institute.…”

“I never felt targeted as an Asian … until I went to a gay pub”: Sexual racism and the aesthetic geographies of the bad encounter

“…Given the central place of sex in a racializing queer public culture, this has particular implications for the queer Asian men I spoke with, but the point raises broader questions about sexual citizenship for others who find themselves devalued in the erotic economies of race (cf. Holland, 2012).…”