GSWS Conference Room, 3810 Walnut Street

No RSVP is needed nor is there a paper to read before the event.

Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law, University of the West Indies, at Mona; Former Commissioner and Rapporteur on the Rights of Women, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)

I
and many others have been involved in strategic litigation in the
English speaking Caribbean that challenges the constitutionality of laws
criminalizing same-sex
sex. Many of us rely heavily on forms of legal reason, to question laws
that criminalize same sex sexuality. The popular historical rationalist
critique that nationalists in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean are
defending laws that are the product of colonialism
has remarkably little traction where these laws still exist. Our
approaches tend to ignore the emotional content of public reason and the
deeply affective relationship of many Caribbeans to laws criminalizing
same-sex sex, what I call one of loving laws. In
this presentation, I will consider some of the networks, relations and
processes that have contributed to the affective politics surrounding
criminalization in the Caribbean, including the modernization of
criminal law and practice in the late 19th century,
constitutional practices of continuity and ‘saving’ laws as well as
gendered and sexualized international legal rhetoric.