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Abstract
British colonial involvement in Uganda, and continued western political, economic, and religious influence over the affairs of formerly colonized territories, warrants critical examination if proper context of the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Bill is to be understood. In response to the question, how did colonial legacy contribute to state-led gendered violence against sexual minorities in Uganda? I advance the argument that authoritarianism and surveillance are both constitutive of colonial and imperial identity and practice, and that the violent attitudes towards gendered and sexual minorities in Uganda are a colonial inheritance. Using critical historiography, I argue that gendered violence, and homophobic attitudes in Uganda cannot be divorced from the seams of Western patriarchy and masculinisms cultivated through the export of legal and religious values. By arguing that surveillance historically was and continues to be a tool for imperial authority to superimpose itself upon formerly colonized territories, I hope to contribute to scholarship in surveillance studies that underscores the utility of history to critiques of the present day divide between western nations and third world former colonial territories.
What, fundamentally, is colonization? To agree on what it is not: neither evangelization, nor a philanthropic enterprise, nor a desire to push back the frontiers of ignorance, disease, and tyranny, nor a project undertaken for the greater glory of God, nor an attempt to extend the rule of law.
Aimé Césaire
Introduction
Without the proper context of history, the link between the recent wave of homophobia, external religious influence, and the Anti-Homosexuality Bill (AHB) in Uganda may not be fully appreciated. British colonial involvement in Uganda, and continued Western religious, political and economic influence over the affairs of formerly colonized territories, warrants critical examination if proper context of the Bill is to be understood. Ideologically, authoritarianism and surveillance as tools of the state, share close affinities. Underlying their interrelation is their convergence at the seams of power for which all intents and purposes, superimposes on a subordinated "other" as a mechanism of having some control over that "other." Both are co-constitutive of each other in that one reinforces the other. In the classic Orwellian sense, authoritarianism as a state-craft is maintained through surveillant strategies to ensure that the object of the gaze remains a subject of asymmetrical power relations.