Sexual Divestments from Empire: Women’s Studies, Institutional Feelings, and the “Odious” Machine

Abstract

This article provides a critical genealogy of the shifts and transformations in the field of women’s studies amid a longer trajectory of radicals and freedom fighters who have consistently challenged US empire and the co-opted elements of academic institutionalization. Conjoining archives of anti-colonial and Black feminist movements of the 1960s and ’70s with contemporary debates in feminist theory, the article argues that critiques of sexual empire that were often located within women’s studies have long laid the foundations for the most radical visions of sexual and gender revolution—movements generated through global militant anti-imperialist, anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, Black, and antiracist struggles of the mid-to-late-twentieth century. And yet, it is precisely such analyses and visions that have been consistently disciplined, devalued, and silenced within the academy, particularly through the institutionalization of women’s studies. This collective article challenges the institutional amnesia that comes with problematic promises of inclusion. It is simultaneously attentive to the corporeal effects of these histories on global landscapes and lives. It demystifies the violence and social stratifications inherent in the institutionalizations of the field. In so doing it lays bare the sharp contradiction between the logics of war and profit-making and the collective justice projects of decolonization, freedom, and revolution that compel our deepest dreams and desires for just futures.