Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race

Deadly and Slick examines the historical emergence of race, gender, sexuality and nationality. Balani shows that gender and sexuality do not 'intersect' with race but form the discursive, legislative, and experiential material of race. We all know that racial conflicts express themselves through the language of culture, but the role of sexuality and gender in these conflicts has been woefully under theorised. The overarching promise of sexual modernity has been that we can live fulfilling, happy lives through the successful pursuit of romantic love, conjugal families, and sexual pleasure. But sexual modernity has a dark underbelly. In Deadly and Slick, Sita Balani examines the regulation of sexual life in colonial India, at Britain's borders, and through the functioning of the welfare state, marriage laws, education, and counterterrorism. These practices don't merely reflect or reinforce pre-existing racial difference, she shows, but are actively productive of racial regimes.