Deadly and Slick: Sexual Modernity and the Making of Race - Paperback

by Sita Balani (Author)

A groundbreaking new analysis of the making of modernity, sexuality and race

If race is increasingly understood to be socially constructed, why does it continue to seem like a physiological reality? The trickery of race, Sita Balani argues, comes down to how it is embedded in everyday life through the domain we take to be most intimate and essential: sexuality. Modernity inaugurates a new political subject made legible as an individual through the nuclear family, sexual adventure and the pursuit of romantic love. By examining the regulation of sexual life at Britain's borders, in colonial India, and through the functioning of the welfare state, marriage laws, education, and counterterrorism, Balani reveals that sexuality has become fatally intertwined with the making of race.

Author Biography

Dr. Sita Balani is a lecturer in contemporary literature and culture at King's College London. She is the co-author of Empire's Endgame. She has published in Vice, Tribune, the White Review, Novara, Salvage, Ceasefire, Five Dials, Boundless, Feminist Review, Identity Theory, and Open Democracy. She has appeared on BBC 3 and Novara Media, and is a regular speaker at events on anti-racism, feminism, education, sexuality, and colonial history.