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As described by The Arts Desk , Dr Laura Bowler is ‘ a triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice ’ . She is the vocalist in Ensemble Lydenskab, and as a composer she has been commissioned by orchestras and ensembles across the globe. She is a Tutor in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music and Lecturer in Composition at Guildhall School of Music and Drama.   I interviewed Dr Laura Bowler on the evolving relationship between music and politics through the captivating, yet sometimes overlooked sphere of contemporary experimental music.   Bowler really is one of kind. Described by The Arts Desk as a ‘triple threat composer-performer-provocatrice’,[1] she is a renowned composer, vocalist and artistic director, specialising in theatre, multidisciplinary work and opera. Her works have been performed by some of the world’s leading ensembles, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Manchester Camerata. Bowler is also a Tutor in Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music, where she invites her students to also explore the unique fusion between music and theatre in the realm of contemporary experimental music. However, it is Bowler’s utilisation of pressing political topics as central themes for her music—including climate change, social media and political ‘slacktivism’—which were the prime sources of intrigue in this illuminating dialogue. Indeed, by incorporating brash and provocative theatrical techniques, Bowler urges her audiences to subsequently reflect on the issues she presents to them. In our discussion, I invited Bowler to consider the mechanics by which compositional praxis and the production and consumption of new music can act as political intervention. By placing special emphasis on her two most notable works, Antarctica and FFF  (Freeze, Flight, Fight), Bowler addresses the complex dialectic between content and form, unpicking the functions that compositional intervention and dissemination can offer political objectives. Especially in the realm of contemporary experimental music, where her target audience may seem narrow, Bowler also considers the limits and challenges faced when mobilising musical material for social change.   Before unpacking her music, I was intrigued to hear about Bowler’s rather unique educational background. Born in Staffordshire, Bowler first studied Saxophone at the Royal Northern College of Music as an undergraduate, before switching to Composition after a term because of stage fright. This is ironic, of course, since she performs in all her musical projects. However, it was not until her master’s studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London that theatre started to play a central role in her work. After coming across the provocative Theatre of Cruelty  manifesto by the French dramatist Antonin Artaud, she made the text the focal point in her master’s thesis: ‘It made such an impact on me because of Artaud’s desire to search for the real  and the raw  in performers’. Experiences outside of music college at the   time further fuelled her passion for the theatrical, including a trip to the National Theatre in Warsaw to watch a production of Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis  . Language barrier notwithstanding (the play was translated into Polish), it was the physicality of the performance that moved Bowler above all else. Indeed, she ‘could not believe the level of sacrifice of these performers, and what they were giving and sharing’.   ‘How can I find this  in the western Classical music tradition?’ It was this question, Bowler asserts, which became the focal point of her doctoral work. Finding any solutions to this puzzle proved challenging. Despite Bowler’s passion for theatre, she had not received any formal training in theatre or drama. To overcome this barrier, she embarked on a theatre master’s degree at the Royal Academy of the Dramatic Arts (RADA), a move which, for Bowler, was fundamental to where her work is now.   The wonderful thing about the course [at RADA] was that not only did you get incredible training on how to facilitate rehearsals and facilitate a room and a psychology of a room, but you also got physical theatre training from the Theatre Ensemble Course there. I studied Grotowski theatre—very much linked to my work on Artaud at conservatoire—and focused on physicality and the ‘raw’ in performance and pushing my body to the extreme.   This passion for physicality is not only transferred to her work but also in her composition teaching. At the Royal Northern College of Music, Bowler leads a ‘Physicality and Performance’ course. By introducing her students to ‘Jerzy Grotowski theatre’ (which aims for complete integration of the actor’s mental and physical senses to reveal the core substance of a character) and the ‘Stanislavski Technique’ (a system comprising various techniques designed to allow actors to create and embody believable characters), Bowler is constantly questioning her students (an ‘interrogation’ method, she jokes) to find their true ‘rawness’.   This approach is perhaps similar to how theatre directors work today: Constantly questioning their actors, their motivations within the character, so that they then can reflect back on that, and find what it is they are ‘doing’ but not quite ‘doing accurately ’.   It was after her ‘fundamental’ studies in the Dramatic Arts that Bowler’s urge to write political works came about. She realised that abstract music on its own terms was not a strong enough vehicle to fully communicate the true human experience of the world; a composition could, therefore, be ‘directed’ if it wants to be. However, it was actually during her final years of her undergraduate degree when she first gained an interest in moulding her works around sociopolitical issues and, more importantly, in using her unique compositional idiom to convey a fully human experience. Bowler wrote a work on her experience of anorexia as part of a collaboration with the BBC playwright Lavinia Murray. Bowler toured this very human work round schools in her hometown in Staffordshire where, before performing the piece, she would also talk to students about her experiences of anorexia. This was especially provocative at the time, because she was still ill. This compositional ethos—that of writing music based on personal experiences which, subsequently, invites her audiences to reflect on their own actions—pervades her writing today.   I was very much doing it because this was my experience of the world, and that was what I was using to create this work. This certainly became the starting point for this need to communicate about the human experience in a more direct way than what was possible with ‘abstract music’.   This forms the crux of one of her most significant works, Antarctica , an immersive multimedia work for orchestra and   vocalist which was co-commissioned by the Manchester Camerata and BBC Radio 3. As suggested by the title, it is the pressing issue of climate change which takes pride of place in this piece. Before writing, Bowler realised that, like most people in privileged populations, her view of climate change was too obscure, preventing her from creating a truly personal, provocative work. So, in order to overcome this limitation, she embarked upon a voyage to Antarctica. While sailing, she recorded videos and took audio samples which, upon writing the work, were manipulated and juxtaposed to create an evocative ‘soundscape’ work. By essentially bringing back her experience of this environment that so few people get to experience first-hand, Bowler’s immersive experience persuades her audiences to reflect on this beautiful, fragile landscape, ‘so that it remains that way’. This is especially the case with the work’s ‘dark turn’.   The flipside of the work is the politics surrounding climate change and the manipulation of governments, the presentation and rejection of climate laws, and the use of text from the media and politicians. That complete juxtaposition with this beauty and landscape was important. The point of it all was to allow audiences to wallow in that beauty, only to be hit by the grotesqueness of the reality and our ignorance.   What do audiences themselves think? For Bowler, discussions with her listeners—or more accurately, ‘spectators’—are crucial for understanding whether the messages conveyed were powerful enough that they then felt the need to take action. These engagements have clearly stuck with Bowler, and she seems surprised by the things she has been told or asked. For example, after Antarctica , an elderly couple approached her, since they had also visited Antarctica, but on a cruise ship.   They were saying that ‘we did not see any rubbish when we were there, and we didn’t see any of the things that you described’. I then told them that the areas a cruise ship ventures in are obviously maintained for tourism, thus explaining the differences of our own experiences. Yet, because their experience of Antarctica was so pure and untainted, they almost could not accept what I had presented to them. It ruined their memory of it, which was very interesting.   The question Bowler seems to be asked most often is this: what new solutions is she presenting in her works? This question is certainly relevant here, especially since we are exploring this work through the lens of political action. Certainly, the theatrical elements embedded in her work imbibe connotations of protest. However, Bowler simply sees her unique musical idiom—her responsiveness to the ‘indirectness’ she perceives in pure abstract music—as a vessel to encourage audiences to simply reflect on the issues at hand and take action.   I don’t have the solutions. I’m not a scientist. Audiences experiencing this piece should then go home and think a little bit more about it. It takes them one step further on their path to acknowledging climate change and doing their individual bit towards it. That is what I see my role as here.   Bowler is excited to be addressing climate change again in a work provocatively titled temperatures aren’t what they used to be , which she is currently writing for the London Sinfonietta as part of a collaboration with play-writer Cordelia Lynn, theatre director Katie Mitchell, and documentary filmmaker Grant Gee. In stark contrast to Antarctica , the work centres on the issues of climate denial and climate psychology, inspired by responses she received on the subject by people completing a questionnaire.   It is a very individual experience. It does not really concern science or facts, but it’s about the process of going ‘OK, climate change is a thing, what does that mean? What can I maybe do as an individual?’ It is quite broad with regards to the spectrum of responses I got. Some people are activists, others do not do anything, and some recycle but drive an SUV. As you can see, this is a hugely complex topic, which is what I want to explore here.   Alongside her interest in global warming, Bowler’s works also address the problems associated with political ‘slacktivism’. This is an informal term which the Oxford Dictionary defines as ‘the practice of supporting a political or social cause by means such as social media or online petitions, characterised as involving very little effort or commitment’.[2] Some of her frustrations are addressed by her most physical work, FFF  (Freeze, Flight and Fight) for ensemble and vocalist, co-commissioned by BBC Radio 3 and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.   I came to write this piece because, like everyone else, I was on social media and sharing various things that were making me angry, and I was getting very involved in very heated conversations online, which were generally not very helpful for either party. I realised the physical  impact it was having on me, that although the existence of social media is one step removed from reality, it was affecting me so much on a really physical level.   What has this got to do with ‘Freeze, Flight, Fight’, a phrase which describes our instinctive and physiological response to danger? Well, while thinking about the physical effect on social media, she came across an article concerning the relationship between ‘Freeze, Flight, and Fight’ and politics, in relation to how one behaves in relation to political news. Bowler was intrigued and decided to write a work which conveyed this paralysing physical response to social media.   Like most of her works, moulding these very physical ideas into music comes with many challenges. One big obstacle to overcome is the fact that Bowler herself performs all of her music. Indeed, she sings through her pieces before writing them, which substantially aids the compositional process. I asked Bowler a question many have asked her before, namely whether she would ever give her pieces to someone else to perform. She replied with a firm ‘no’. Perhaps, Bowler states, she would consider it at some point, but would want to be present in the rehearsal process. It is clear how attached she is to her music, given that the messages reflected emanate from her own experiences. Audiences, therefore, are moved by such authentic, visceral projections of these messages, and are perhaps inclined to reflect on what they have just witnessed.   What about the players she works with? While watching FFF , I was immediately struck by how physical the orchestra was. Not only did the complexity of the instrumental texture lead to extremely gestural playing, but the players themselves were required to act at times and make various vocalisations. This is all very demanding, but Bowler’s training in Theatre Directing is a crucial asset here as she goes through all the actions in detail to ease the players’s tension. Of course, while her ensemble enthusiastically seeks to grasp and perform her ideas, Bowler is willing to compromise because, at the end of the day, musicians perform better if they are comfortable. Furthermore, Bowler’s role as a performer here also helps because her passionate demeanour in performance is very much absorbed and echoed by the players. A sense of comradeship evolves here, which also fuels the powerful messages of this work.   FFF is formed of three movements named ‘Freeze’, ‘Flight’, and ‘Fight’, with chaos and disorder emerging right from the work’s outset. The first movement commences with Bowler announcing, ‘In the beginning’, words from the opening of Genesis: words which, contrary to Bowler’s musical texture here, reflect stillness, serenity and, more importantly, order. The connotations of immobility and self-protection associated with the ‘Freeze’ are vividly captured in this movement.   The conflict between music and text is exactly to do with the passiveness with the experience of social media. It addresses how ‘pervasive’ social media is becoming in society and how it is slowly but surely affecting our behaviour. The movement shows how incredibly violent social media is, even if we do not know that it is. All of these juxtapositions of how it behaves is what I am trying to capture in some way in that first section.   The second movement ‘Flight’ sees Bowler appropriately embody the role of an air stewardess. Anger is momentarily sidelined, as she is seen signing sheets of paper, scrunching them up and throwing them across the stage. This all represents the act of signing online petitions, which Bowler considers to be emblematic of political ‘slacktivism’.   The movement functions as a commentary on our privilege to not only want the internet, but to want the internet to go ‘Yes, I can sign it, and then I’ll share it as a good deed, because I’m a good person’. But, how many people would sign it had they not been exposed to it on social media in the first place? I am certainly guilty of this, but it is important to reflect on that, and notice this process as ‘slacktivism’.   The chaos then resumes for the final movement ‘Fight’, where Bowler puts on an ‘emoticon’ head mask, repeatedly shouting the words ‘You capitalist! You socialist’. This represents a call to arms demanding that, instead of sitting there, scrolling and doing nothing, we take action. This is perhaps the most intense we see Bowler, shouting and pushing her voice to breaking point. However, Bowler then shuts down and a pre-recorded video of herself appears playing for the remainder of the piece. At this point, the players are spraying themselves with detergent and Bowler is passing round disinfectant wipes to the audience, though this has nothing to do with the current pandemic. While this is all happening, the virtual Bowler tells the audience that they ‘all need to get into a great big bath of disinfectant and we need to disinfect ourselves’. Bowler explains: ‘This moment here the idea of “cleaning” ourselves before we go out and take part in the “true and honest” fight, and not the “slacktivist”, easy one’.   While these works engage provocatively with global issues, challenges arise when presevnting them in the elitist world of contemporary experimental music, let alone Western classical music. Bowler is always aware that her music attracts a very niche type of audience and, as a result, thinks a lot about what is presented in her works and how. This is certainly an arduous task, since one can never predict what her audience is going to think or whether her ideas have come across in the way she intended. However, what is vital for Bowler is that, when one makes political works, regardless of what artistic medium one is working in, the formatting which is presented has to be fundamental to the context in which it is performed in. She unpacks this a little further:   With FFF , for example, the work was specifically designed for that form of the contemporary music festival. It wouldn’t work the same it if was presented at Bridgewater Hall for the Manchester Camerata, because the people who go would not experience the piece with the same kind of context of works that they know, and it would mean very different things, and they may be drawn the ‘peculiarity’ of the work rather than what’s in  the work.   However, despite the apparent solidity of her craft, Bowler poignantly reveals that she is constantly learning, seeking new ways to communicate the issues she is so passionate about, to ensure her audiences feel that same ardour to take swift action and to reflect on their own actions. It was inspiring to hear Bowler’s thoughts on music’s multifaceted power to express pressing political issues. Filippo Turkheimer, the interviewer, is a postgraduate Music student at New College, Oxford, where he holds a Senior Scholarship. He previously read Music at New College, sang in the college’s prestigious chapel choir, and was president of the music society. [1] Rayfield Allied, ‘Laura Bowler’ < http://www.rayfieldallied.com/artists/laura-bowler > accessed 30 March 2021. [2] ‘Slacktivism, N’. ( Oxford English Dictionary Online ) < https://ezproxy-prd.bodleian.ox.ac.uk:2446/view/Entry/51394141?redirectedFrom=slacktivism#eid > accessed 30 March 2021.

Dr Mostafa El Feki is Director of the New Library of Alexandria. He has been a Professor of Political Science at the American University in Cairo, and has held numerous posts in the Egyptian government, including Ambassador to Austria.   Dr Mostafa El Feki has witnessed five Egyptian presidencies and been prominent in the political sphere for the last four and a half decades. He is well placed to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of each Egyptian President to have served over the last 50 years. He outlines in detail how each President has helped or hindered Egypt’s status as a major Middle Eastern state, in addition to how the Egyptian populace have felt about each President.   I have to be honest and say that if I answered this question based on my own personal emotions, I would favour President Nasser’s legacy above all else. However, objectively speaking, with regard to stratagem and policy-making, I am compelled to highlight President El Sadat’s policies for their success. At first glance, this may feel like a contradiction. However, I don’t feel it is so. To offer you just a snapshot of my thought process regarding your question, President Nasser’s charisma and leadership were extremely attractive to my generation. For us, and many after us, he was a national hero. However, President El Sadat’s wisdom and political initiatives were also well received by the majority of the Egyptian people, especially in relation to the breakthrough he accomplished towards securing peace between Egypt and Israel in 1978, an accomplishment for which he was rightfully recognised by virtue of his ascertainment of a Nobel Peace Prize.   Having ‘worked most closely with [Hosni Mubarak] during [his] time as Political Secretary’ (July 1985–October 1992), Dr El Feki speaks candidly of this highly controversial President, whose 30-year reign incited the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Acknowledging that ‘Mubarak was a highly nationalistic leader and had a great career in the military service within the Egyptian Air Force’, Dr El Feki also expresses his reservations. ‘His problem was that he didn’t take full advantage of the “time factor” despite his extensive presidency, hence losing out on several valuable opportunities for the country during his term in office’.   With respect to the 2011 Egyptian revolution, Dr El Feki identifies ‘the main goal of the revolution’ as ‘the call for social justice and equality in Egypt. This is the reason you could see signs reading “A loaf of bread and justice” at the heart of the mobilisation in Tahrir Square […] This is also why many raised the picture of Nasser, as he was considered the symbol of social justice during his period of leadership’. Dr El Feki insists, ‘[i]t is also important to note that none of the slogans of the Egyptian revolution made an indication towards foreign policy or propaganda against Israel’.   When asked about Mohammed Morsi, a President yet more controversial whose term was cut short after one year and one month, Dr El Feki keeps his response brief and forthright. ‘With respect to President Morsi, he had no remarkable achievements during his tenure and his policies were widely considered to be a reflection of those the Muslim Brotherhood adopted’. When pressed on why Morsi’s tenure proved fruitless, Dr El Feki insists that ‘he made no progress whatsoever in any field of development. In fact, I believe his entire presidency was an immense failure’.

John Dewey Distinguished University Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Philosophy and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Elizabeth Anderson is famously redefining egalitarianism in the field of political philosophy. Conventionally, philosophical debate has imagined the two concepts of equality and freedom to be polar opposites. Anderson has sought to challenge this perception by subordinating the popular egalitarian notion of distributive equality to that of democratic equality, which brings the concepts of freedom and equality together. Anderson’s groundbreaking work extends beyond political philosophy and engages in interdisciplinary research across fields and topics such as racial integration, the philosophy of economics, theories of value and rational choice, and the history and philosophy of the work ethic. In this interview, Anderson reveals the importance of empirical analysis within philosophy, what we can learn through an analysis of the history of egalitarianism and the role of social movements within its discourse, and how present inequalities have come about.   CJLPA : Could you perhaps tell us a bit about your trajectory to becoming a philosopher?   Professor Elizabeth Anderson : I started off in college studying economics, but there I noticed issues that I had at a very foundational level. These were questions like: should we assume that preferences are all in the person’s self-interest? We often choose to observe social norms: for example, out of norms of etiquette, you don’t take the last roll in the basket. But if the host offers it to you, you would prefer that to not having it. I thought economics wasn’t sorting out the distinctions well, and that was leading to mistakes in welfare economics. If people are declining to do things just out of social norms, it doesn’t necessarily mean that their welfare is being advanced, even though they’re doing what they want in the sense that they are choosing to do it. Such foundational questions moved me into philosophy, because philosophers want to put pressure on concepts that are used in the social sciences that maybe haven’t been probed adequately, and to think about introducing other ideas that could call into question some of the normative conclusions that people are drawing from their social scientific research. So that moved me into philosophy, but I have always been engaged in the social sciences. I think economics would be enriched if it drew distinctions that better tracked normatively important ideas.   CJLPA : Your current research interest is in the history of egalitarianism. What was your motivation behind this recent research interest?   EA : If you look in contemporary political philosophy, you see that much is written about freedom, and what freedom means, and why it is important. Equality is there, but I found it to be under-theorised. In particular, there’s the dominance of a certain distributive notion of equality that is kind of cosmic, which I think makes no sense. It applies to situations like this: imagine there is a distant world out there with beings just like us, only they have half the welfare levels that we do. Some conclude that there would be this unfairness in the universe because there’s an inequality. I think this notion of inequality has nothing to do with the inequality that people care about in real society. What people care about is not just some abstract difference between what I have and what you have. It’s all about social relations and social processes. How did those rich people get all that money? Did they get it at others’ expense? And are they using that wealth to dominate others? Does society turn wealth disparities into grounds for stigmatising the less advantaged? If it’s just some cosmic inequality with some distant planet, there’s no causal connection between our well-being and their well-being, and there is no injustice in that.

Mark Cazalet, born 1964, trained at the Chelsea and then Falmouth Schools of Art, after which he held scholarships in Paris and India. He works in a variety of media, including engraved glass, paint, prints, mosaics, and graphic media. He has taught in several art institutions and has been a Senior Member of Faculty at The Royal Drawing School since 2012. Travel has always played an important role in his art. Through the experience of his journeys, he has opened up rich colloquy between contemporary and traditional arts, between classical and folk forms. Architecture, film, fiction, and theology have all played a role in his creative evolution.   Professor Frances Spalding, CBE, FRSL, PhD, the interviewer, is an art historian and biographer. After studying History of Art at the University of Nottingham, she became a specialist in twentieth-century British art. Following the publication of her British Art Since 1900 , in the Thames & Hudson ‘World of Art’ series, she was commissioned by the Tate to write its centenary history. She has also produced five biographies of artists as well as one on the poet Stevie Smith. She taught at Newcastle University 2000-15, becoming Professor of Art History. In 2014 she guest-curated the exhibition ‘Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision’ for the National Portrait Gallery. During the year 2015-6 she acted as Editor of The Burlington Magazine and became a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge.   This conversation took place at Clare Hall, Cambridge, on 25 February 2021.   Professor Frances Spalding: Our guest this evening is Mark Cazalet. Mark is an artist who has pursued a very wide-ranging career. He could be described as a latter-day John Piper, for, like Piper, he has worked in a variety of media, received major public commissions, has a strong sense of place and has travelled widely. Both Piper and Cazalet remind me of Beethoven’s remark, ‘Art demands of us that we do not stand still’, a challenging statement that refers to much more than travel. Travel, however, is something which many of us have greatly missed during the COVID crisis. Some years back I heard a speaker at a conference in Cambridge say, ‘The most radical thing you can do today is to stay at home’. This was with reference to ecology, but today we understand this command in relation to COVID, as well as in relation to our carbon footprint. Yet the fact that a common swift can stay in the air for ten months without touching ground shows how innate within the natural world, including within us, is the need to move, to migrate, to travel. Friedrich Nietzsche advised, ‘Never trust a thought that didn’t come by walking’. And I want to suggest that the current interest in reviving a habit that began seven hundred years ago, namely that of pilgrimage, is further evidence of our need to locate ourselves in place and time, and to realise that remembrance is key to the continuing of life.   This evening Mark Cazalet will deliver a presentation on his work and travels, and the understanding he has gained from the latter. So, over to you, Mark.   Mark Cazalet : Frances wrote the first important essay on my work back in 1994, and since then has put her finger on the pressure points in my work, consistently, sparingly but fiercely. This opportunity to present the role that travel has had in my work has made me aware that my creativity has been subject to two forces: a centrifugal force, and a gravitational force. Since the seventies, the opportunity to propel ourselves out into the far corners of the world has been an exciting liberation. But it has come at a cost. I think we are now beginning to ask ourselves why we are travelling such big distances. What do we really learn from these travels? And how might—in this present time and after the pandemic—our notions of  significant  travel change? That is what I call the gravitational aspect—what matters to us here and now and within our environment, and which calls on our need to stay still, the alternative to travel.   Because I will start by showing you some of my early work, which I’m frankly terrified to see again, I thought I’d jump ahead in this first slide to a recent work from my Kyoto Zen gardens series which I’m pleased with and excited by (fig 1). But I want to compare it with work from my degree show (such as fig 2). The comparison makes me aware that, as an artist, you don’t travel forward in a linear way, but are endlessly bumping into old iterations of yourself. With creative work you travel cyclically. Things you thought you had dealt with come up again. While studying at Falmouth, in Cornwall, I imagined myself as another Peter Lanyon, in a glider, flying over the countryside and becoming a Cornish abstract painter. As so often happens on long journeys, you end up doing the very opposite thing you thought you would do. I ended up as a student hunting in charity shops collecting detritus and creating strange, theatrical, mise-en-scène, dark cityscapes. Fig 1. The stillness the dancing, Kyoto Zen garden collage (Mark Cazalet 2020, collage papers, inks, MT tape, pencils, and oil pastels, 46 x 130cm).

Well-known for her book  Bananas, Beaches and Bases , exposing the embedded systemic and institutionalised patriarchy that is evident not only in global politics, but in the political science and literature of international relations, Professor Cynthia Enloe is one of the most compelling feminist theorists and political scientists of the twenty-first century. Currently a Research Professor of Political Science at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Professor Enloe has written countless articles and books on the important role gender plays in the areas of militarism, war, and globalisation. In this interview, Professor Enloe outlines the difficulties faced by feminist theorists and researchers, how to identify gender disparities during crises (with reference to the current pandemic), and the questions one should ask in order to be able to expose patriarchy, as well as the importance of asking these gender-curious questions.     CJLPA : In your most recent book, The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy , you write that, contrary to common belief, patriarchy is not weakening, but modernising and adapting to current times. Why has this happened?   Professor Cynthia Enloe:  First of all, I’m not a pessimist. I’m not somebody who says that all the efforts of women around the world in so many different countries that challenge patriarchal practices, patriarchal beliefs, and patriarchal institutions are fruitless. That’s not my message. But what I am more and more aware of is how those people who are committed to patriarchy—even if they don’t call it that; they call it ‘preserving normalcy’—constantly are updating their ways of preserving their privileges. That’s what I mean. Here’s one example: when a comics artist and a comics company, for example, together created Wonder Woman  in 1940, that looked then like a big breakthrough: a woman could be a fictional superhero! But Wonder Woman ’s creators and marketers—she was created by a man and a male-owned comics company—deliberately dressed her in a sexualised costume. Wonder Woman  didn’t look like most women in the world. Opposition to her sexualised portrayal motivated dozens of UN staff women dramatically to protest this comic book figure being named (by a male-led UN department) the ‘ambassador for women and girls’ in 2016. To these hard-working international civil servants, that UN choice looked like an updated version of patriarchy. So, on the one hand, the creation of a woman superhero seemed to challenge the patriarchal presentation of the usual masculinised superhero; on the other hand, though, the creative innovation seemed designed to perpetuate the sexualisation of women with power. Patriarchal imagination was simultaneously being challenged and confirmed.   Here’s another example of patriarchy’s adaptability. There used to be no women cabinet officers in virtually any government. I have a friend whose mother was the first woman to be a cabinet minister in Chile, becoming the Minister of Education back in the 1960s. She was a Chilean feminist pioneer. Women’s breaking into the masculinised world of government cabinet officers has been indeed a real gender achievement in any country. Nevertheless, while we recognise that, we still have to keep asking when and how the male political elite transformed their cabinets so as to feminise some cabinet posts—for instance, now routinely appointing women to the posts of Ministers of Environment, Culture, Health, and Education, while carefully ensuring that the most powerful cabinet posts have remained in the hands of male ministers (Defence, Interior, and Finance today still are the most commonly masculinised).   You’ll notice that the ‘patriarchal sustainability formula’ relies on masculinising some things, while feminising other things, and—this is key to any patriarchy’s perpetuation—always acting as though the things that are masculinised are more serious, more valuable, more significant than the things that are feminised.   With this understanding in mind, we can take a fresh, feminist look at the still-unfolding history of women and men in governments’ cabinet posts. Patriarchal people’s preferred scenario is: first, men (and a few ‘Margaret Thatcher’s) with political power stubbornly resist women being allowed to take up senior cabinet posts. But then, though, when women begin to stick their collective feet in the political door, thereby managing to gain a few senior cabinet offices, the male political elite begin to appoint them to ministries that, in their shrunken masculinised political imaginations, are deemed less politically important.   Now is the point where you probably want to intervene and ask, ‘But nowadays, in our current era of climate crisis, how can even patriarchal politically powerful men imagine that their own government’s environment ministry is less important for their country than, say, their defence ministry?’ Or, put another way, you might ask, ‘With climate change threatening entire populations’ ways of life, how can patriarchal men kid themselves into thinking that environmental policy-making can be feminised, that is, shoved to the political margins?’.   These are exactly the sorts of questions feminists— as thinkers, researchers, and activists— pose. So we have to stay on our toes. Will ministries of environment today start to acquire more political saliency? As they do, will the proportion of all of the world’s ministers of environment who are women begin to drop? As climate change acquires the precious mantle of a ‘state security issue’, will male political elites begin to deem environmental policy ‘too important’ to be left in the hands of mere women? Stay tuned!   People who are invested in patriarchal ways of doing things, I’ve learned, are always trying to update their strategies, trying to convince the rest of us that their revised formulas amount to ‘progress’. Patriarchal people, in other words, are never just old fusty men in pinstripe suits, smoking cigars in their private clubs. Patriarchal people are now the hip Silicon Valley guys working out, eating salads, and sporting black T-shirts. I think it’s a big mistake for us ever to imagine that patriarchy is old-fashioned. It can be as up-to-date as tomorrow.   CJLPA : In your opinion, what current challenges do feminist thinkers like yourself face more generally, and more specifically within the field of international relations?   CE:  Lots of people who ask feminist questions about international politics face not so much direct hostility as in attention. Feminist questions—and their answers—about the gendered causes and consequences of Brexit, Iran’s weaponry, Palestinian rights, Myanmar’s military coup, the world trade in Xinjiang cotton, implementing the Paris Climate Accord, the trials at the International Crimes Court, too often are met with ‘Who cares?’ The scores (really scores!) of us who are seriously pursuing these and many similar questions (nothing is out of bounds for feminist international politics specialists!), have become convinced, as a result of what we’ve uncovered in the workings of international politics, that we can help citizens and policymakers be more effective by helping them become more realistically informed about the complex workings of power.   Our findings over the last 50 years of gender-curious research have shown us, first, that there are a lot more wieldings of power in more sites (especially efforts to control women—as mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, sex workers, factory workers, plantation workers, domestic workers, refugees, and widows) than non-feminist commentators want to admit. Non-feminist commentators constantly underestimate power. Second, our collective investigations have revealed that power takes many more forms than most commentators acknowledge. That’s one of the findings that all the activists and their academic allies who’ve made #MeToo into a genuinely global movement have lit up in neon.   In the academic field of what is called ‘IR’, gender-curious scholars have made a lot of headway. There are now new books and whole book series by publishers like Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Palgrave, and Routledge focused on gender and international politics. That’s big. Major transnational NGOs such as Human Rights Watch, The International Crisis Group, and Refugees International now fund and publish gender-conscious investigatory reports. In no small part that is due to there being a lot more feminist-informed staff people inside those NGOs. We also have created or transformed dozens of academic journals that publish very interesting articles that explore the workings of gender and power—that explore the relationships between diverse women, men, and power, as well as the contests over the norms of masculinity, femininity, and those contests’ implications for gaining, losing, and wielding power.   Furthermore, we’ve created academic associations and caucuses within academic associations around the world. Both the US-based International Studies Association and the British International Studies Association have large and lively gender studies sections. Just recently, I was talking with women who have created a Women and Gender Caucus inside the Brazilian International Relations Association. Last week, I was talking with a professor in Bucharest who has launched a new network of South-eastern European feminist security experts. There also are now at least two separate Feminist Foreign Policy groups.   Still, it can be hard for feminist researchers to get a hearing in the most prestigious media or most prominent international politics academic forums. What oftentimes happens is that you look at undergraduate and graduate course syllabuses and what do you see? The faculty member teaching the course doesn’t think of themselves as knowing much—or, frankly, caring much—about the workings of gender in international politics, yet nowadays feels they’ve got to give at least a token nod toward gender and IR (this is progress!). So, they squeeze the topic of gender and international politics into just one week. One week for the world’s workings of masculinities: really?  One week for exploring women’s resistances to abuse and   privilege:  really?  And, of course, this single week is put at the end of the term. This means that by the time the faculty member gets to the end of the term, she—or usually he—hasn’t covered everything else they consider important and therefore zips over gender political analysis without serious consideration.   That’s how patriarchy works. It was a big success to get most people who teach international politics—especially in the introductory undergrad or grad courses—at least to assign one reading on gender in international politics, and to devote at least one week to the topic, but neither in a way that might infuse the entire course and its students with a deeper feminist curiosity. Despite tokenisms, though, there are nowadays more and more graduate students in more and more countries—South Korea, Japan, India, Sweden, Poland, Argentina, Brazil, Romania, Turkey—who are really serious about investigating and teaching about the multiple gender dynamics shaping international politics. There’s where hope lies.   CJLPA : That’s exactly why I wanted to ask that question because I have spoken about it quite a lot recently with some of the female peers in my course. We have asked in seminars, for example, why should feminist critiques not be incorporated in other module topics?   CE:  You are so right: ask ‘Why?’ See if you can get the instructor in the course to be a little uneasy about their own segregating of gender dynamics into a separate section, as if it had nothing to do with everything else you all are investigating. I call this ‘patriarchal siloing’. It’s a teaching practice that is designed to foster the risky notion that most of international political life is pristinely un-gendered—as if contests over manliness do not shape militarism, as if practices of making women’s factory labour ‘cheap’ does not affect international trade, as if efforts to control women’s reproduction do not play roles in migration, development, or nationalism. You could even suggest that the instructor reorganise the course. Everyone is very possessive about their own course syllabuses. Still, you might suggest, ‘Next term, couldn’t you place the gender-curious analytical questions up in the second week of the course so that then we will be prepared throughout the rest of the course to ask those probing questions?’ That’s not asking the faculty member to completely reorganise his or her thinking, though it might have that effect on the students! Give it a try, and then tell me what happens!   CJLPA : What has been the effect of COVID-19 on gender inequalities across the world, and what are we likely to see happen to these inequalities post-pandemic?   CE:  This is so interesting. In recent months as the pandemic lockdowns have rolled across diverse countries, I’ve been hearing two things: first, that the ‘politics of care’ finally, after decades of neglect as a mere ‘women’s issue’, might be taken seriously; second, that what has happened in so much conventional (that is, not gender-curious) political commentary is that a lot of people who are treated as ‘experts’ because they presumably know how to talk about budgets, balance of payments, and national security, but haven’t a clue about the workings of child care, are having to move over and give at least a bit of authoritative space to those feminist economists, feminist sociologists, feminist historians, and feminist labour researchers who do know the broad policy implications of low-paid and unpaid gendered child and elder care.   One of the things I’m very hopeful about in the new Biden–Harris administration here in the US is that both care and experts on care are getting a lot of official attention. Joe Biden has appointed specialists in the gendered political economies of care to senior posts both in the White House and in several cabinet departments. Women representatives in the House (for instance, Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut) and the Senate (Patty Murray of Washington stands out) are finally getting the legislative and executive backing their childcare and family bills deserve.   Perhaps the biggest conceptual innovation in US politics today is that ‘infrastructure’ now includes not only the conventional bridges and highways, but also family care provision. Talk of government funding for bridges and childcare in the same policy sentence—that’s big!   Since eldercare and childcare in so many countries relies not only on women’s unpaid labour but also on the low paid labour of migrant women workers, of course, that means—as it has long meant— that the political economy of care is an international political phenomenon. This means that in the not-quite-yet-post-COVID world, all of us who do international political analysis had better get up to speed on the gendered international politics of care.   During my doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley, nobody ever urged me to investigate the politics of paid and unpaid care. But when I was researching what became the first edition of Bananas, Beaches and Bases , it dawned on me that I should look at the international migration of domestic workers. It was Filipinas who stirred my curiosity. I’ve been interested in Philippines politics for decades because of its experience as an American colony, because of its serving as the site of major US military bases, because of its vibrant electoral politics, and because of its prominent women’s movement. So, when researching Bananas , my attention was caught by the data showing that remittances sent back home by thousands of Filipina women and Filipino men working abroad was a significant factor in the Philippines’s balance of payments. The men were working especially as crew members on globalised cargo ships. The women were working as nurses and as domestic workers. Suddenly I realised, ‘I should pay attention to that’.   One reason that I think I was kind of ready—not an expert, but intellectually ready—for the COVID-19 era was that I had already been tutored by women in international domestic migration networks (which now include Brazilian, Sri Lankan, Ecuadorian, as well as Filipina women) to keep track of domestic work as an international political phenomenon, even if most political commentators weren’t paying much attention.   As we haltingly, stunningly, unevenly move beyond COVID, what will the gendered patterns of paid and unpaid work look like? Will the economic inequalities between women and men in post-pandemic UK, Brazil, US, India, and Australia gape even more widely than they did before 2020? What will be the consequences for both national and international politics? We had better start paying attention now.   CJLPA : Do you think that we also need to keep an eye on the kind of crisis management that goes on afterwards?   CE:  What are the gender analytical skills required today by employers of anybody who gets a crisis management job? My guess is none. That likelihood is despite a burgeoning literature on the gender differences in what happens in all sorts of natural disasters and public health crises to men and to women.   For example, feminist geographers have investigated what happens to men in earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis and what happens to women. Gender differences, they have found, loom large. Who was taught to swim, who wasn’t? Whose customary attire enables them to run fast? Who must rescue the children? Who fishes in boats out the ocean, who harvests seafood close to shore? Who in any household is responsible for collecting firewood and fresh water? Who in a hastily assembled refugee camp is most likely to be threatened with sexual assault? If crisis managers don’t know of these findings or do not integrate their lessons into their organisations’ preparedness practices and their response practices, they will not only fail to address the particular needs of women and men; their gender-ignorant actions will deepen gender inequities.   CJLPA : Would you say you are quite hopeful in this instance?   CE:  Wherever any gender analytical skills are being seriously taught is a cause for hope. Any university that is making the acquisition of gender analytical skills a degree requirement gives me even more hope. We can’t wait until people are hired into policy-making or crisis management jobs, and then imagine that they’ll suddenly become gender-curious—though, thankfully, I’ve seen this happen occasionally. Far more effective is to build gender curiosity and gender analytical skills acquisition into the career-building curriculum.   CJLPA : Do you have any recommendations on how to be a conscious feminist?   CE:  Each of us is most likely to see the value of a feminist curiosity in our own lives as citizens and in our own work in any field if we can grasp how gender dynamics of any sort shapes the thing we care about. So, first, I’d suggest that everyone plunges into case studies. In most of my writings I try to mix case studies with larger analytical questions and patterns. The big picture and the small picture—I never choose one over the other. It’s the relationships between the two that I’ve found most revealing. I’m wary of those commentators who imagine that their own badges of ‘intellectual sophistication’ are earned by talking only about the big picture.   I think we all learn lasting lessons from exploring grittily detailed case studies. We learn to appreciate complexity; we learn to stay wide awake to subtleties; we train ourselves to have long attention spans. We can learn a lot too from delving into case studies of poor policy-making.   Look, for instance, at the relationships between men and women and the operations of masculinities and of femininities in London’s Grenfell Tower fire disaster, in Flint, Michigan’s water contamination tragedy. Investigate the workings of masculinities in the Boeing MAX 8 disasters. Explore the sexual abuse of local Congolese women by international male health workers during the country’s recent Ebola outbreak. Take a close look at the gender dynamics shaping responses to COVID in New Zealand, India, and South Korea.   Second, I would suggest that we all pay attention to what data are being collected and what data are not being collected—with what consequences. It’s amazing how much feminist energy has been and is still being spent trying to get national and international agencies to collect gender-disaggregated data for the sake of making better, fairer, more effective, more sustainable policies. For years, the UN collected nutritional data by ungendered household caloric intake. Households, though, do not eat! Men and women and boys and girls eat—and, lo and behold, gender-smart data collectors found that, even within poor households, adult men consume more calories and especially more protein than do adult women.   Finally, data must be gender-collected and gender-disaggregated on everything: illness, deaths, carers, students, teachers, paid work, unpaid work, bankruptcies, arms manufacturing, policymakers, budget expenditures, policing, market vendors, vaccinations, contractors, detentions, weapons possession, mining, farming, banking, peacekeepers, donors, sexual assault perpetrators, child marriage…everything. Teresa Turkheimer, the interviewer, is a final-year undergraduate in Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, working towards an MSc in European and International Public Policy at the London School of Economics in the 2021-22 academic year. Her interests lie in European politics, European Union foreign and security policy, and political philosophy.

Professor Andreas Rahmatian is Professor of Commercial Law at the University of Glasgow School of Law. Originally from Vienna, he obtained his first degree in law and a PhD in Private Law from the University of Vienna, and completed another degree in musicology and history there. He holds an LLM from the University of London. He worked as an associate attorney-at-law in Vienna and qualified as a solicitor with a City firm in London before he became a full-time academic. He has been a fellow at the Institut d’études avancées in Nantes, France. His research focuses on intellectual property law and commercial law. His books are  Copyright and Creativity: The Making of Property Rights in Creative Works (2011),  Lord Kames: Legal and Social Theorist (2015), and Credit and Creed: A Critical Legal Theory of Money (2019).    CJLPA:  Do you think all forms of creativity should be protected by the law? Professor Andreas Rahmatian : It’s a difficult question, of course, because it depends what you mean by creativity. Here we probably talk about creativity in relation to copyright in particular, because creativity can otherwise be in relation to all sorts of things. Now the problem with copyright creativity is that it’s not necessarily dealing with artistic creativity. Obviously, artistic creativity is also part of copyright creativity, but the understanding of creativity in copyright is based on a normative definition, if not a completely clear one. Whether that is artistic creativity as an artist understands it is actually immaterial. So the question is, when you ask, ‘Should all forms of creativity should be protected by the law?’, it is already the case that non-artistic creativity is protected by the law. Whenever you have got a kind of selection or arrangement which somehow points back to some individual, then you have got, as it were, creativity in the sense of copyright as ‘originality’.   The judgment of Infopaq [1] and the following cases of the CJEU in the EU didn’t change very much the originality ideas in the UK, in my opinion. In the United States the understanding of originality is pretty much the same, but whether that original work is also artistic in any way is rather irrelevant. It [the work] can be rather trivial. That is actually immaterial for the protection. And this is how copyright laws envisage creativity—even on the Continent, where they operate with all sorts of devices to water down the (theoretically) more personal requirement of the author’s input. In theory there is an approach more geared towards creativity in the sense of artistic creativity, but in reality this is much less so. There is, for example, this nice legal concept of ‘small change’, or kleine Mü̈nze —it is really called like that in Germany—where you have works of everyday use, really ordinary works which can have some notional modicum of creativity put in, and you still get protection. Then below that level you quite often have neighbouring rights, for works which do not fulfil the required creativity level or originality level, but the neighbouring rights still protect them. Then below these, you have under certain circumstances protection against parasitical competition in the sense that you actually have a prohibition to copy someone else’s work. So you have got all sorts of protection levels, both on the Continent and in the UK (or in the common law countries), and they achieve protection in different conceptual ways.   Now some people will say ‘creativity’ also means creative investments, or even ‘creative’ accounting, which is usually illegal but perhaps also creative. So it’s very hard to pin down ‘creativity’. A typical problem is restoration work in the arts, by a picture restorer, or a restorer of musical pieces. The classical case in that area in the UK was the Sawkins v Hyperion  case, 2005,[2] which shows that for copyright protection you need not be creative in the sense that you are actually creating anything new. Artistic creativity, if you go to an art school or to a conservatoire as a composer, has a tinge of novelty, but we are not interested in novelty in copyright law. So the restorer, who actually writes his counterpoint in the style of the music of the late seventeenth century, as Sawkins did, in order to restore the missing parts to produce a performing edition, did exactly not [sic] mean to be creative but faithful to the work to be restored. It’s meant to be in the style of the Baroque composer. And yet it is protected as original for copyright purposes, and there’s no doubt that this also applies on the Continent: the result in such a case would have been, and in fact was, the same, because in France, in a parallel case, Sawkins’ work was viewed as being original. That was decided under French copyright law, although the French authors’ rights system is supposed to be totally different. It’s a very nice case where we have two different legal systems with essentially the same facts, the same claim in both cases, and the same result, based on a different conceptual system. Although it may be quite difficult to appreciate this from an ‘artistic’ viewpoint, the creativity or the skill of a restorer should get protected. In fact, in France and in Italy there are quite a few cases in relation to restoration, especially in the visual arts, and there is no doubt that they get protection.

Currently Professor of Government at King’s College London, Professor Vernon Bogdanor is a leading expert in British constitutional politics and history and has received a CBE in recognition of his extensive contribution to the field. In his most recent book, titled Britain and Europe in a Troubled World , published in 2020, Professor Bogdanor traces Britain’s historical relationship with the European Union in order to understand how Brexit came to be. In this interview, Professor Bogdanor tackles the constitutional issues that the United Kingdom is likely to face in a post-Brexit era, the different lessons learnt as a result of the referendum vote in 2016, and the role that the monarchy has to play in the current British parliamentary democracy . This interview was conducted across 28 and 29 April 2022. CJLPA : What brought you to research and understand British politics? What fascinated you the most about British politics or the British political system? Professor Vernon Bogdanor : Our very strange constitution. The Queen once said that the British constitution has always been a puzzle and always will be. I have tried to elucidate that puzzle. We are in fact one of just three democracies in the world which do not have constitutions. The other two are New Zealand—whose population is half that of Greater London—and Israel, although the Israelis are working towards a constitution. Now, some people in Britain ask, ‘Should we have a constitution?’ But in a sense, that is an absurd question. The real question is: ‘What is there about the air in Britain that means we should not have a constitution, not do what every other country does?’ This problem has become more acute since we left the European Union (EU). In my view, when we were in the EU, we were in fact living under a constitution, namely the treaties of the EU, which provide for a division of power both at the centre between the Commission, the Council of Ministers, the Court of Justice, and the Parliament, but also territorially between the EU itself and the member states. Also, in recent years, the EU has yielded the protection of rights in the European Charter of Fundamental Rights which was enacted in 2009. That led to a remarkable episode in British constitutional history which has not been very much noticed. In Benkharbouche v. Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [1], Ms. Benkharbouche claimed against the Sudanese embassy unfair dismissal, failure to pay her the national minimum wage and holiday pay, as well as breaches of the Working Time Regulations. The Sudanese embassy claimed immunity under the provisions of the 1978 State Immunity Act. But the Supreme Court ruled that sections of the Act were incompatible with Article 6 of the European Convention providing for a fair trial. The remedy for this would be a declaration of incompatibility which is not a strictly legal remedy, since it has no legal effect. But Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights provides that if rights had been violated by the Convention, they have also been violated by the Charter. So, the relevant parts of the State Immunity Act were disapplied. For the first time in British history, the Court disapplied part of an Act of Parliament because it conflicted with human rights. That, I think, would have Dicey turning in his grave. It was something new and unprecedented. As we have now left the EU, the Charter no longer applies, but Benkharbouche, nevertheless, is an important precedent. The European Charter protects a far wider range of rights than the European Convention. The Convention was enacted in the early 1950s and human rights are, in my view, a dynamic phenomenon. For example, in those days there was no thought of the right to protect the environment which is in the European Charter. Few thought of the right to academic freedom which is in the European Charter. But the most important right is the right to equality in terms of gender, sexual orientation, race, religion and so on which is not in the European Convention. There is also a right to healthcare in the European Charter but not in the Convention. The Convention provides a right to education but not healthcare. Leaving the EU took us out of a constitutional system. We have incorporated almost all EU law into our own law, so that the government and parliament can decide what they want to keep, what they want to modify, and what they want to repeal. That is, of course, a huge task. Incorporation itself is nothing new. For example, our ex-colonies incorporated British law so that they could decide which British laws they wanted to keep. But when they did that, it was because they wanted to develop a constitution of their own. We have done something perhaps unique in the democratic world and instead of entrenching we have been dis-entrenching. We have moved away from a constitutional system to an unprotected constitution. This is emphasised by the fact that one part, almost the only part I think, of EU law that we have not incorporated is the European Charter of Fundamental Rights. This means we have moved from a system which protects rights, to one which does not protect rights. We do have the European Convention, but the way we have adopted it is rather different from almost every other country because judges are not given the right by the Human Rights Act to disapply legislation conflicting with the Convention. All they can do is to issue a declaration of incompatibility. That is just a statement which has no legal effect, and it is then up to Parliament to decide whether to take action. Parliament has a special fast track procedure by which it can take action if it so wishes, but courts in other European countries have much greater powers because they can disapply legislature. This raises a very interesting question because the other 27 member states of the EU do, of course, retain the European Charter. So, I would ask this question: Are our Members of Parliament (MPs) so much more sensitive to human rights than the legislators of other countries in Europe that they can be entrusted with this very important function? I will leave the answer to this question to those reading the interview! It is worth stressing that rights are not solely for nice people like ourselves, but also for very small minorities who may not necessarily be very nice, for example, prisoners, suspected terrorists, suspected paedophiles, and so on—also, asylum seekers, a very small minority not effectively represented in Parliament, also have rights. Brexit raises this issue of whether we should continue to live under an unprotected constitution which does not effectively protect human rights. And there is a further question arising from Brexit. Does the devolution settlement need further protection in Scotland, Wales, and particularly in Northern Ireland? I will discuss devolution a little later. With our strange constitution, law and politics are closely intertwined. Much more of our constitution than in other countries is based on convention. These conventions, in turn, often depend upon popular feeling. For example, we have the case now of Boris Johnson and Partygate. A Prime Minister who has deliberately misled Parliament must, so the Ministerial Code declares, resign. But this convention depends in large part on popular feeling. Are people angry enough to protest to their MPs or do they say that it does not matter too much? A great writer on the constitution, not as well-known as Bagehot, but well worth reading, Sidney Low, author of The Governance of England first published in 1904, said, ‘We live under a system of tacit understandings, but the understandings are not always understood’. That seems to me a very perceptive point about the British constitution. CJLPA : I am assuming on the basis of the points you have just mentioned, do correct me if I am wrong, you are a supporter of a codified constitution in the UK. In light of this, has this been received or acknowledged by figures in the political system? Are there supporters for a constitution at the moment? I can imagine that the current opposition might not be keen on that idea. VB : When we had a Labour government, Gordon Brown who was Prime Minister from 2007 to 2010—and I think it no accident that he came from Scotland—favoured a constitution. If he had been re-elected in 2010, he would have tried to enact one in 2015 which was the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta—but he was not re-elected. The Liberal Democrats have long been in favour of a constitution, and I think some in the Labour Party are. Perhaps the longer Labour is in opposition, the more likely it is to support a constitution. But the Conservatives are, in general, not in favour, partly because they are the natural party of government in the sense that they tend to be in power most of the time. I mentioned that it was not an accident that Gordon Brown, being Scottish, was in favour of a constitution, for many Scots have never accepted the idea of the sovereignty of Parliament. They say that it is the Scottish people who are sovereign, and that point has been tacitly accepted by Westminster. There was a referendum in Scotland on independence in 2014. The Scots voted against it, but had they voted for it, they would have become independent. There was also a referendum before devolution was introduced. In both cases it was accepted that it was for the Scots to decide, even if their decision went against the wishes of Westminster. So, for the Scots, the central principle is perhaps less the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament than the sovereignty of the Scottish people. That is also accepted in Northern Ireland. If a majority in Northern Ireland were to decide that it wished to join with Ireland, that would be accepted by Westminster. An American once said that in politics where you stand depends upon where you sit. Perhaps that is true in Britain because it may be that the sovereignty of parliament is primarily an English concept. The Welsh government favours a quasi-federal system for the United Kingdom (UK). The Scots believe in the sovereignty of the Scottish people. In Northern Ireland there is a divided community, but there also, the principle of the sovereignty of parliament is overtaken by the principle of the sovereignty of the people. There are, however, two different views about the Northern Ireland constitution depending on whether you are a unionist or a nationalist. CJLPA : Say Gordon Brown is attempting to get re-elected again and he has the idea of codifying the constitution within his manifesto. What is the extent of the risk of the codification of the constitution becoming a politicised issue in the media? VB : I doubt if there is much risk. Enacting a constitution would be a long process because it would require popular consent. Most people in England do not think much about the constitution, although they do in Scotland and Northern Ireland. We would first have to have a body to draw up an agenda; then you would need a Royal Commission which would have to travel around the country having evidence sessions. That would be a kind of learning exercise for the public. Then the government would draw up a constitution and then there would have to be a referendum, probably with a majority needed in all parts of the UK, unlike the Brexit referendum. So, it would be a long process. I do not think it would necessarily be party political. I think, however, that it will be a long time before we get a constitution. It is not an immediate issue, and it is very low on most people’s priorities. Human rights also are very low on most people priorities, though one lawyer, former MP and former attorney general Dominic Grieve, has made the interesting suggestion that the European Convention should include a right to healthcare as the European Charter does, in addition to the right to education. The reason is that the right to healthcare would affect large numbers of people, and therefore it would be more likely that more people would feel they own the Convention, which they do not at present now because they think of it as defending disreputables such as criminals. But they would then own it and there would be more respect for human rights. Otherwise, constitutional issues are a minority concern. There are no mass meetings in Trafalgar Square with crowds clamouring for a constitution! CJLPA : If a human rights issue is quite prominent and has a lot of media following, perhaps it could grab some attention? VB : Only amongst a small group of the intelligentsia, the academics—the chattering classes if you like, not amongst the people as a whole. I do not think academics are very representative of public opinion in general or necessarily have much insight into public opinion. Opinion polls show that enacting a constitution is not a priority. CJLPA : I think you would agree with me that there have been many, but not all, British politicians who have been out of touch with the citizens that they are trying to represent: take the recent Partygate scandal that you mentioned earlier and the fact that it is currently difficult to punish a misbehaving government, or Brexit where even though the referendum was a close result, MPs were evidently not representative of the UK because a majority of them actually wanted to remain. In light of that, to what extent is the current UK political system truly a representative democracy? VB : I think your introduction of the referendum is very important. For, as you say, the majority of MPs were against Brexit, and the government was against Brexit. For the first time in British history, Parliament was enacting legislation in which it did not believe. Legally, Parliament is still sovereign, it could have ignored the referendum, it would not have been unlawful to do so. But, in practice, it was not possible to ignore the referendum. So, Brexit is a milestone in our constitutional history. Not only was Parliament no longer in practice sovereign, it was shown not to be representative of the people. As you know, many in the British political elite were fervent Remainers and did not want to accept the result. The EU does not like referendums either. In 1974, shortly before we were to have our first referendum, the ex-President of the European Commission Monsieur Jean Rey said these matters should be left to trained people. ‘You cannot’, he said, ‘have a system in which housewives should be allowed to decide the future of Britain!’. A lot of the arguments against referendums, in my opinion, are similar to the arguments used against extending the suffrage—that the people are ignorant, that they do not understand the issues, and that political decisions are best left to elites. A French reactionary, Joseph de Maistre, declared that the principle of the sovereignty of the people—which is now a part of our constitution I believe—is so dangerous that even if it were true, it would be best to conceal it! Not only is the referendum now part of our constitution, but there are, what we might call, ‘shadow referendums’, referendums which were not held because of fear of the result, but which nevertheless influenced the political agenda. For example, when Tony Blair was Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, he very much wanted Britain to join the Euro, but he believed that this required a referendum. However, he never put the issue to referendum because there was not one single opinion poll which showed a majority in favour of the Euro. You may say looking at the experience of continental countries, particularly Mediterranean countries such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece, that we were lucky not to join the Euro! CJLPA : On the topic of democracy, I would like to ask a question specifically about the role of the British monarchy because monarchs by now are the exception, not the rule. Especially now, in Britain, it is quite difficult to support the monarchy when its role in the UK constitution might be minimal but its influence, as we have seen, has proven to be plenty. What role, if any, does the monarchy have to play in a democratic system? VB : The main role of the monarchy is not constitutional. Its constitutional powers are almost nil. But as well as being head of state, the Queen is head of the nation. She can, as it were, represent the whole country to itself. By contrast, if you have a president, you either have a president such as Macron in France or Biden in America who is head of the executive. They represent not the whole country, but just half of the country. Or you can have a constitutional president without political power which, for example, Italy and Germany have. I suspect that very few people could name the presidents of Italy and Germany, I certainly could not, and the position is usually given to a harmless retired politician who is put out to grass. Do we want that here? President Cameron or President Blair? They could not represent the whole country. This is particularly important with the devolution settlement because any elected person would be either English, Scottish, Welsh, or Northern Irish. The Queen is none of these and all of them at the same time. We are lucky in the Queen because she instinctively understands, what you might call, ‘the soul of the British people’, which it would be very difficult for a politician to do. Unlike a politician, she has no party-political history. No one knows whether she is Labour, Liberal Democrat, or Conservative, or what her views are on politically controversial matters. I think we are fortunate to have a constitutional monarchy. The constitutional monarchies in Europe are very stable, moderate countries: some Scandinavian countries, Britain, the Benelux countries, and Spain. We are lucky that we have never had a revolution because revolutions or defeat in war tend to get rid of monarchies. For example, in Italy the monarchy was removed after the defeat in the Second World War because the king was thought to be associated with fascism, in Germany after the First World War, and in France after the revolution. We are lucky, perhaps because we are an island, that we have never been involved in revolutions or upheavals. In 1945, when we had the first Labour majority government, the American president Harry Truman was visiting Britain and he said to King George VI, ‘I see you’ve had a revolution here’, and the King said ‘Oh no we don’t have things like that’. CJLPA : You say that the monarchy is the ‘soul of the British people’. I would perhaps counter that. You mentioned the Nordic countries and the role that their monarchy has to play. I would say that the level of influence is completely unparalleled. It is true that the power is minimal, but the influence and the presence is not. VB : I do not know if the Queen has much political influence. When has she exerted political influence? I do not think that is right. CJLPA : I was thinking more of the case of Prince Charles. VB : Yes, that is interesting. He has had influence, but not on party political matters. His technique is to raise an issue which he thinks has been hitherto ignored by politicians, for example, the environment and climate change. When the politicians do take up the issue, he steps back. He has also spoken on a number of other issues that he thinks important which are not party political, for example architecture, teaching Shakespeare in schools, and so on. He has said controversial things, but they are not controversial in the party-political sense. He has never spoken publicly about Brexit or whether we should have a Conservative government or Labour government. He is very careful in all his speeches not to appear partisan. He does not speak on advice like the Queen but, out of courtesy, he shows his speeches to ministers. I suspect that if ministers said, ‘Well, look, this does entrench on government policy’, he would back down. He has known since birth what his role will be, and he has been trained and brought up in the constitutional tradition. He has not been party-political, but he has influenced opinion in other ways. I agree with you on that. CJLPA : With race and identity coming up a lot, regarding the institution itself and its imperialist past, rather than the Queen more specifically or the members of the family, I think people disagree that it is representative of the British people. VB : The monarchy in Britain is unlike the other monarchies I have mentioned because it has an international dimension thanks to the existence of the British empire, now the Commonwealth. Of the 54 countries which are members—around a third of the world’s population—15 of them, now that Barbados is a Republic, are Commonwealth monarchies. The rest are republics. The Commonwealth is a voluntary organisation of equals, while the empire was based on domination. But the empire cannot have been quite as terrible as some suggest if almost all of the colonies have voluntarily agreed to join the Commonwealth. The only former countries ruled by Britain that have voluntarily left the Commonwealth are Burma, now Myanmar, and Ireland. Two counties which were not part of the empire—Mozambique and Rwanda—have joined. The Commonwealth gives the monarchy an international dimension. The majority of people in the Commonwealth are not white and not Christian. This means that the monarchy must stand and does stand for racial and religious equality. In her Diamond Jubilee in 2012, the Queen’s first visit was to Leicester which is an example of a multiracial city where integration has proved successful. And in 2004 she made a particularly interesting Christmas broadcast. She spoke of the parable of the Good Samaritan, the implication of which was clear. ‘Everyone is our neighbour, no matter what race, creed or colour. The need to look after a fellow human being is far more important than any cultural or religious differences. Most of us have learned to acknowledge and respect the ways of other cultures and religions, but what matters even more is the way in which those from different backgrounds behave towards each other in everyday life’. She then went on to say: It was for this reason that I particularly enjoyed a story I heard the other day about an overseas visitor to Britain who said the best part of his visit had been travelling from Heathrow and into central London on the tube. His British friends, as you can imagine, were somewhat surprised, particularly as the visitor had been to some of the great attractions of the country. ‘What do you mean?’, they asked. ‘Because’, he replied, ‘I boarded the train just as schools were coming out. At each stop children were getting on and off—they were of every ethnic and religious background, some with scarves or turbans, some talking quietly, others playing and occasionally misbehaving together, completely at ease and trusting one another’. ‘How lucky you are’, said the visitor, ‘to live in a country where your children can grow up in this way’. We can also see the influence of the monarchy in the Queen’s broadcasts on COVID and in broadcasts commemorating D Day and VE Day where she was able to speak for the whole country. In my opinion, the case for constitutional monarchy is unanswerable. CJLPA : To what extent did the countries in the Commonwealth remain within the Commonwealth for economic reasons? VB : That is part of the argument, but one should not exaggerate it because, after all, when countries become independent, they do not ask whether they will be better off or worse off. If you had said to the Nigerians in the 1960s, ‘You will be economically worse off outside when you are no longer a British colony, when you are no longer ruled from Westminster’, they would have said ‘That’s completely irrelevant. We want to govern ourselves’. The Indians and other newly independent countries would have said the same. So, I would not overstress that argument. The Commonwealth is in a way a sentimental organisation which does a great deal of good because one of the main problems in the world is the relationship between people of different ethnic groups and religions. It is often forgotten that the Queen’s Christmas broadcast is not delivered in her role as Queen of Britain but as Head of the Commonwealth in which a majority are neither white nor Christian. I think it must be valuable to bring together people of different countries and different ethnic groups. CJLPA : We know that the Northern Ireland protocol is a particularly precarious issue, and a very delicate part of the Brexit process. We know it has been ruled by the High Court and the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland as legal. If it is not constitutional, on the other hand, what does that mean for Brexit as a whole, or even just the UK constitution in general? VB : What it means is that at the very least the Protocol must be radically amended. The Protocol may or may not be constitutional. But the courts were asked to pronounce on whether it is lawful—a different matter. They have said that it is lawful, but it does not follow that it is constitutional. After all, a statute that is incompatible with the Human Rights Act is lawful, but it is not constitutional. It would be lawful for the government to have ignored the Brexit referendum, which was an advisory referendum. But most of us think it would not have been constitutional. CJLPA : What is likely to happen from here on in with the Northern Ireland protocol? What are we likely to see? VB : The Northern Ireland Protocol is a consequence of Brexit. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land border with an EU country. That has become of greater importance since Brexit because Britain will probably diverge from EU rules and regulations. The question is whether the regulatory and customs border should be on the island of Ireland or in the North Sea. Wherever it is, there is going to be trouble because if it is in the island of Ireland, the Irish nationalists are going to be annoyed. If, as is the case, it is in the Irish Sea, the unionists will be annoyed. Brexit goes against the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement or Belfast Agreement—I should say that there is no agreement on what it is to be called. If you are unionist you will call it the Belfast Agreement, if you are nationalist you will call it the Good Friday Agreement. But whatever it is called, the Agreement was an attempt to resolve the Irish problem. It enabled residents of Northern Ireland to identify as British, Irish, or both, and to enjoy Irish citizenship as well as British citizenship. But, with Brexit, if someone decides on Irish citizenship, she cannot access in Northern Ireland the rights of an EU citizen. She cannot, for example, access the European Charter for Fundamental Rights. So, Brexit does complicate the Irish problem. Both John Major and Tony Blair said in Northern Ireland that this would be a consequence of Brexit. Northern Ireland, as it happens, did not vote for Brexit: 56% voted to stay in the EU. But Britain is not a federal state and so Northern Ireland was overruled by the rest of the country. The Northern Ireland courts have been considering the contention by the unionists that the Protocol is unlawful because it goes against the Act of Union of 1800 which provided that there should be no customs barriers between Britain and Ireland. The courts have said that the relevant part of the Act of Union was overridden by the Withdrawal Act which is also a constitutional statute. Parliament well knew what it was doing when it enacted the Protocol, and in so doing, it implicitly repealed the relevant part of the Act of Union. The argument against the constitutionality of the Protocol would be that the Act of Union is absolutely fundamental because it is constitutive of the UK itself. So, it cannot be implicitly repealed but has to be explicitly repealed. That issue may go to the Supreme Court, I do not know whether leave to appeal to the Supreme Court has been given but the unionists are seeking it. CJLPA : Because of the fact that it was brought by staunch unionists to the courts, is conflict almost inevitable? VB : Yes. The withdrawal agreement is a victory for the Irish nationalists. It is a zero-sum game. The Good Friday Agreement, or the Belfast Agreement, tried to avoid the zero-sum game. Both unionists and nationalists could win, one could be both British and Irish. But, in relation to the Protocol, one can understand the unionist position, since the Protocol divides the UK economically. CJLPA : Regardless of how the Northern Ireland protocol is likely to turnout, are we likely to see a chain reaction of similar, but more sovereignty-related, issues in the other devolved nations? VB : Yes, Brexit has caused renewed conflict between Westminster on the one hand and Scotland and Wales on the other, for this reason. When the devolution settlement was made in the late 1990s the assumption was that Britain would stay in the EU. The devolution of some functions, for example, agriculture and fisheries, was fairly meaningless because almost all policy in those areas was determined by Brussels, so there was no real scope for an independent policy in these areas from Edinburgh or Cardiff or, indeed, Westminster. In theory, with the incorporation of EU law back into Britain, all EU powers relating to devolved matters should go to Scotland and Wales. But this raises a problem since we cannot have, for example, four different systems of agricultural subsidies in the UK, especially when agriculture will almost certainly be the subject of trade negotiations. Suppose we seek an agreement with America. The Americans would want to ensure that they had access to the whole of the UK market, not just England. So, in the Internal Market bill, the government reserved some powers which had been devolved. There has been much annoyance in Scotland and Wales and their governments have tried to amend the law through the courts. They have, however, not succeeded since we do not have a federal system. So, Parliament can still legislate on matters devolved to Scotland and Wales. But in Scotland and Wales many say, ‘This may be lawful but it’s unconstitutional, you shouldn’t be legislating on devolved matters without our consent’. So, Brexit has raised problems in Scotland and Wales as well as in Northern Ireland. CJLPA : On a similar note, there is the looming possibility of a second independence referendum. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has promised the Scottish people that in a stable post-COVID era she would propose to them the question of independence. VB : That is possible, but contrary to what many think, Brexit makes independence more of a gamble because there would then be a hard border between Scotland and the rest of the UK. The rest of the UK is Scotland’s largest trading partner: almost all its exports go to the rest of the UK, not to the Continent. So, independence could be economically catastrophic for Scotland. In addition, Scotland gets more per head in public spending than England thanks to the Barnett formula. And she would face the same problem she faced in 2014 of what her currency should be. If it were to be the pound, she would have her monetary policy controlled from London. A similar arrangement caused Greece and Italy many problems with the EU. They were restricted in their economic policy since they had no control of monetary policy which lay with the European Central Bank. If Scotland had her own currency, interest rates might rocket sky high, since the new currency would be such an uncertain quantity. If Scotland joined the Euro, she would have to reduce her budget deficit to around 3%. Her budget deficit is now at around 7 or 8%. The cuts in public expenditure or increases in taxation would need to be huge. They would make George Osborne, the austerity Chancellor, look like Santa Claus! Scotland would not get the benefit of Margaret Thatcher’s EU rebate either, I suspect. So, independence is a less viable project than when Britain was in the EU, but, as I mentioned a moment ago, it might be argued that these economic factors are not really fundamental when it comes to independence. When India and Nigeria became independent, they did not ask whether they would be better off of or worse off. Nor did Ireland when she became independent. Pressure for independence seems to be receding a little at the moment, though it is stronger amongst younger voters than older ones. The current Conservative government will not grant a second referendum but if there is a Labour government dependent on the Scottish National Party (SNP), the SNP might insist on a second referendum as a price for supporting that government. So far, we have been talking about the British problem, but I think Brexit gives rise to great EU problems as well. Donald Tusk, the President of the European Council, said it was a mistake to believe that the factors leading to Brexit are not also present in other EU countries. Brexit, he said, should be a warning signal for the EU. President Macron of France—on the Andrew Marr Show in early 2017—could not guarantee that if a referendum were held in France that it would not yield the same result as in Britain—Frexit. The EU faces problems and I think the main problem is that the original model—the Jean Monnet model, the Jacques Delors model—has reached its limit. As the EU comes to entrench upon national sensitivities, it encourages a populist reaction, particularly in areas such as immigration and control of economic policy. I think it would be better for Europe to develop along Gaullist lines, as a Europe des etats , a Europe of states (De Gaulle has often been mistakenly accused of using the phrase Europe des Patries ). The Commission remains the only body that can initiate legislation. Many find that odd since it is not elected and cannot be dismissed by the voters. Some Gaullists have said that it should become a secretariat of the Council, and that seems to me sensible. The federalists, Jean Monnet and Jacques Delors, wanted the Commission to be eventually responsible to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers to become the upper house of member states. But Europeans do not regard the European Parliament as their primary legislature. Their primary allegiance is to their domestic legislatures and the European Parliament is seen as part of an alienated superstructure – representing them not us. There is a conflict, exacerbated by the EU, between the political class and the rest. The political class favours integration but the people are sceptical. This is particularly so in France. It was first revealed 30 years ago when the French, thought to be at the centre of European integration, only narrowly accepted the Maastricht treaty. Then, in 2005, they rejected the European constitution. Nevertheless, the elites go ahead regardless and that seems to me foolish. They need to take account of popular feeling. The EU was founded in a different age, the early 50s, when there was much greater deference, and I am not sure it works as well today when there is a demand for greater accountability. So, Brexit contains important lessons for the EU as well as for Britain. CJLPA : What lessons have the member states themselves learnt? And do they have a responsibility for how Brexit played out? VB : I think they need to look at how to combat populism and I have tried to suggest how that might be done. What is remarkable in Britain, contrary to many predictions—and I was myself a Remainer – is that Brexit, paradoxically, has liberated Britain’s liberal political culture. Survey after survey has shown that the public is more sympathetic to immigration than it was. We have developed more liberal attitudes to immigration than most EU member states, and immigrants have more of a chance of finding employment here than in many other European countries. The present government contains six members from non-white ethnic minorities. Angela Merkel’s last government in 2017 had none at all. When we left the European Parliament, we took a large percentage of ethnic minority Members of the European Parliament with us. A number of European countries have none at all. Contrary to what many predicted, we have not become a more insular racist country, we have become a more liberal country. Populist forces seem to have been weakened. The EU must itself learn how to combat populism. CJLPA : After Brexit we saw many far-right parties recoil very quickly from their own plans to exit from the EU. What has the far-right learnt with regards to Brexit? VB : The far-right benefits from general alienation from government, particularly on immigration and on the fact that the EU makes it very difficult for national governments to control economic policy. In the Mediterranean countries—not so much in Italy but in Spain and Portugal and possibly Greece—the far-left has gained more. The far-left has gained in France as well. It is the entrenching by the EU on national sensitivities that is so worrying. If you look at past federal states, many have been built after war—the American Civil War, the German wars under Bismarck, the Swiss war in 1848—and took a long time to form, even in America where everyone speaks the same language. There is not going to be any sort of federation in a Europe comprising so many different national traditions, languages, and cultures for a long time. One might have got it and might possibly still get it if an inner core of the original six got together—Germany, Italy, France, and the Benelux. But there is very unlikely to be a federation of the 27 member states. CJLPA : In light of some of the negotiations being postponed to a later date, when will we see a post-Brexit life? Will we be seeing it anytime soon? VB : Brexit is a process not an event. I think the process will continue for a long time. And it will be some time before we can judge the economic and constitutional effects of Brexit. On these matters the jury is still out on whether Brexit will prove beneficial or not. The jury is also still out on the future of the UK. Will Scotland remain part of it? Will Northern Ireland? No one knows, and I am not going to predict. It is difficult enough for the historian to find out what has happened in the past let alone what will happen in the future. This interview was conducted by Teresa Turkheimer, an MSc student in European and International Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her main interest lies in understanding the causes and effects of inequalities that characterise the labour market today, and is hoping to pursue a career in research in the coming years. [1] [2017] UKSC 62.

A front-runner in the fight for equality and justice, Professor Judith Butler is one of the most influential philosophers of the past century whose work has transformed the field of queer and feminist scholarship. By redefining what gender means and how it is displayed, Butler has broken down societal and cultural barriers, and, most importantly, allowed others inspired by their work to finally understand their identity and their place in the world. Both an activist and a scholar at UC Berkeley, they have also worked to blur the lines between the academic and public spheres, redefining what it actually means to be an intellectual in the current era. In this interview, Professor Butler delves into the increasing censorship of gender studies, discusses the unjust treatment of war victims, and reflects on their career thus far. This interview was conducted on 10 May 2022. CJLPA : For the interest of our readers, could you tell us about your story and your professional trajectory, how you got to where you are now? Professor Judith Butler : I was trained in philosophy at Yale University and in Heidelberg in Germany and was meant to be a somewhat classical continental philosopher. I studied Hegel, Marx, Kant and I continue to love that work but I did enter the world of gender studies and gender politics in the late 1980s, in part because I suffered discrimination on the job market on the basis of my gender presentation and sexual orientation. I realised I couldn’t get past those obstacles easily and so I thought that I should probably write about it, make it my theme. As a result, I produced scholarship that is a melange of continental philosophy and feminist theory. I’ve also been active in human rights organisations including a former organisation called the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, but also the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City—and I am involved in Jewish Voice for Peace and engage in activism for Palestinian rights of political self-determination. I also continue to consult with a wide number of countries, policymakers, and feminist, queer, and trans activists on gender politics, trying to fight the anti-gender ideology movement which has turned out to be quite influential and destructive. In fact, I’m writing a book on that topic now. CJLPA : You mentioned your work in gender studies as well as your work with regard to feminist theory. Are the two inextricably linked or are they two separate entities, and should they be regarded as so? JB : They’re interlinking projects. They’re not the same but I do not think it is possible to do work in one area without connecting with the other. Both of them are important academic forms of inquiry, and they each need institutional support. Many scholars would not be able to distinguish between what is feminist studies and what is gender studies, since gender is at the heart of both forms of inquiry. Indeed, as academic fields, they are also related to social movements, often teaching literature generated within the context of social movements. And they both require institutional support. Even when one is doing scholarly work in feminist studies—let’s say one is working on renaissance literature or psychoanalytic theory, or something that feels very academic and not particularly activist—one still needs to have an institutional space where that can happen. I need funding for my research, I need a job, or I need a fellowship—in other words that research has to be supported. It cannot be censored, it cannot be criminalised, and my programmes cannot shut down otherwise I can’t do my academic work. So, we might say that even the most self-referential academic work is still dependent on institutional support of some kind: publishers willing to publish, or universities establishing programmes that are keeping them alive. Our academic work depends on institutional conditions that are of public concern, and under certain circumstances, we can be censored or criminalised or our programmes can be shut down, at which point we can’t do that academic work. So, the politics of the problem are in some ways linked to the academic activities themselves. That said, I would say that not all feminist theory has to immediately say, ‘Oh and here’s the activist implication of what I just wrote’. I don’t think so. Sometimes we are trying to understand the world, we’re trying to reconfigure how we understand social relations or history or even the psyche, we’re undertaking projects that are academic in nature that may change people’s understanding and maybe even change their lives or their activism. But I don’t believe we have to justify our academic work through its activist potential, nor do I think we always have to lay out what the activist potential is. CJLPA : Is this a source of frustration for academia, and is there a way to change that? JB : There are two sorts of problems. On the one hand, we are fighting censorship across the world. In India, they closed down something like 40 gender studies programmes, in Hungary gender studies had to move to Vienna, along with the entire university: the Central European University. They were shutting down gender studies because gender is apparently this terribly frightening and destructive ‘ideology’ according to those who oppose it. And now we’re seeing legislation that seeks to keep the word out of certain languages, or keep gender studies and critical race theory out of curricula—both of which have become caricatures, phantasms by those in the positions that criticise them or seek to censor them. So, we do have to be able to say, ‘Look, what we do is open inquiry’. And that’s what universities are supposed to be supporting. We’re asking key questions. We are discussing and debating, we clearly don’t all hold the same view. This is a field of study like other field of studies where there are methodologies that are contested and discussed and revised. There are norms of research and ways of proceeding that are academic in character, and that have as their aim an open-ended inquiry to know something better, to find out what is true or what is real. That is what we do as scholars. We need to defend the study against those who would caricature it, demean it, and substitute a frightening phantasm for the complex work that we actually do. On the other hand, very often in the classroom these days young people want to know what one’s own political position is or what political position they should take immediately on an issue. Sometimes, when you’re asked to take a position, for instance, are you for or against gender studies, it is important to take a step back and question whether gender studies is a monolithic thing that any of us could, or should, vote on in that way. Maybe the reduction of gender studies to a monolith to which we say yea or nay is precisely the problem. As somebody for whom critical thought requires a willingness to call a framework into question, I don’t want to have to take a political position if I don’t like the way it is framed, when it is the frame that is politically problematic. That’s where a critical form or reflection becomes important and that’s also part of pedagogy: we have to ask people to think through their positions, the way they are framed, what they imply, which is precisely not the same as prescribing a certain position or training them how to take them. CJLPA : On the note of critical thinking, how can one be a gender conscious researcher, whatever the field may be? JB : Well it’s interesting, you know I’m reminded of EP Thompson’s very important work on the working class, and he did quite an impressive job in treating the working classes as a kind of subject, and what they underwent, and how this was produced in time and in history—a very textured and persuasive work that had, and continues to have, enormous influence in the field of social history. And my friend Joan W Scott came along and said, ‘Oh I just love this work but he’s missing something, which is that the world of work and the world of the public is already gendered’. It was not a factor or something added onto a class analysis, but it informed the very way in which we conceptualise the working class subject. Further, what Scott proposed was that gender operates through a wide number of fields as an active and consequential presupposition. Gender doesn’t just describe gender identity, as many people now assume. An entire public world might be gendered in the sense that it’s structured by certain masculine values or presumptions that are not always marked. What, for instance, is the gendering of the public sphere? Is the public sphere presumptively masculine and, if so, how we can read that? Even now, with the war in Ukraine, we don’t see much commentary on the gendering of the war, but it’s very much there. There is a form of masculinism at stake for Putin, but also for Zelenskyy whose t-shirt and appearance re-enforced a form of heroic masculinity—the fighting man. How many women can assume that position? What does it mean that this heightened militarism and even the resistance some of us support, relies on certain ideas of embodiment: able-bodied, willing to fight, capable of fighting, of the age in which you could fight, and masculinised?—with an occasional woman with the shotgun looking like a Kurdish fighter who we’re supposed to appreciate for the feminism she represents. The recent reports on sexual violence at the border or in family homes in Ukraine are just absolutely appalling, which is why the recognition of gender-based violence is so important for legal and public policy. I think we do need to think about gendered practices, gendered spheres of life and not just gendered persons. CJLPA : On the topic of gender, you’re most well-known for your ground-breaking theory JB : of gender performativity which was introduced most famously in your book Gender Trouble in 1990. On the note of the Ukrainian war, as well as the gendered reporting of the war and the gendered war itself, if gender is performative, who or what dictates the script in the current era? JB : In general, you can try to dictate a script—people do try, and sometimes scripts seem to be pretty strongly dictated when strong directors are at work, and actors are willing to acquiesce to their will. In such cases, scripts are fixed in place—but I think in fact there’s some contingency and unexpected turns in scripts that, if I follow your metaphor, are a bit more improvisational, sometimes departing from the script, or sometimes shredding the script. For me, there may be gender norms that prescribe what we should do, but even in the act of apparent compliance, we can be departing from the norm, even contesting its power. Obviously, there is a hyper-gendering of issues going on right now, not only in the war, but in a wide range of political efforts to deny reproductive freedom, LGBTQI+ rights, and debunk gender studies. Obviously, Putin and his version of masculinity has been commented upon at length, but I would underscore the public and shameless form in which he displays his willingness to destroy and to subject the most vulnerable people to violence. This is a sign of the kind of masculinity he values, one measured by the shameless infliction of harm. It is important to remember that there is no one masculinity, no single norm that organises the appearance or operation of masculinity. With Putin, we see a lethal version of masculinity at work. For instance, Masha Gessen has written about Putin’s masculinity in a way that I think is pretty interesting, and then of course in the Boston Review, just recently, there was an important statement by the Director of Gender Studies at Kharkiv National University, her name is Irina Zherebkina, and she’s a translator who, in fact, translated some of my work and some of the major work of feminist theory from across the globe. She understands the attack on gender and feminism as a key component of this war. Putin himself named ‘gender’ as a potential threat to the spiritual values of Russia in his policy statement on national security in 2015. CJLPA : Does performativity extend to other forms of identity? Whether that be race, disability, class, religious association, to what extent is identity in these instances on the other hand performative? JB : I said gender was performative over 30 years ago and I’m not sure I would hold to the exact same position I put forward then. It’s interesting the positions you write about when you’re unemployed. I did have a temporary position at the time, but I think that when we say gender is performative, we don’t mean that it’s only performative or that’s the only thing we can say about gender. It just means that people generally have to establish their gender within a grid of legibility, or that gender is established through various means. Though the ways in which we do in a daily way unconsciously or consciously assert gender or establish it, suggests that it needs to be asserted or established, it could go another way. And it is never fully or exclusively in our power to do that establishing. There’s no natural necessity about the ways in which gender becomes available to us, which is not to say that nature plays no role or that volition is all that matters. Gender is established and re-established through various powers, and always through processes articulated in time and space. Performativity doesn’t mean it’s all fake or false or artificial, and it surely doesn’t mean that it’s fully chosen in the sense that ‘Oh, I can choose whatever I want to be today’. It means only that gender is negotiated for us before we have any agency, and we come to negotiate it in quotidian ways in time. It is not established once and for all through sex assignment, and even sex assignment cannot stabilise sex through time. As I have moved through the world, there were times where I would walk into a bathroom or locker room, because I’m a swimmer, and be told that I’m in the wrong one and I’m pretty sure I’m in the right one. Once in China I was not able to speak the language, so I literally took my shirt off so that they could see, then they were, ‘Ohhh ok, ok, ok, ok!’ But like, what did I have to do? It wasn’t immediately clear. I mean there’s some ways in which cultural legibility works this way. Obviously not just about myself, but a range of people who deal with how they are perceived, what they have to make clear time and again in order to be known or recognised or even to pass into or out of regulated spaces. This happens differently with disability. Sometimes you have to let it be known. It doesn’t mean that your disability is a performative effect in the sense that it has no substantial reality; on the contrary, the problem is that if you seek to make yourself known, legible, recognisable, or seek to evade forms of recognition that imply criminalisation or pathologisation, then a kind of orchestration of the body becomes important, a way of making plain or public one’s bodily situation, quite regardless of whether or not one has a visible disability. There are, of course, many misunderstandings about performativity because it draws on both linguistic and theatrical traditions. In my view, it cannot be reduced to either domain, but rather names their interconnection, the site of their overlapping. For those who take performativity to be a theatrical mask that you put it on and take it off at will, performativity is a bit of entertaining fakery. Although masks, as we know, can have much more important meanings in dance, religion, and rituals. The example of drag that I offered in Gender Trouble became inadvertently exemplary for some readers of what performativity means. A number of women do get up and ‘put on their face’ and ‘fix their eyes’ and ‘do their hair’. These are just daily ways of crafting, inspired by both anxiety and, presumably, gender idealisations of various kinds. One might not describe such activities as a gendered kind of crafting, but it is a gendered kind of crafting, just as some sorts of activities seek to de-constitute those norms on purpose, or engage in another way of doing gender that doesn’t really work with masculine and feminine, either exposing a gendered spectrum, or a position outside the spectrum as it has been established. At the same time, and equally importantly, we’re done to by norms, by the unconscious, by others; we’re undone and redone by norms that work on us in ways that we can neither track nor control. We’re not just crafting ourselves in some radically agentic way; we are struggling with the ways in which we were treated and situated and formed over time, and that’s why it’s a struggle rather than an arbitrary expression of personal liberty. On the issue of race people have thought, ‘Oh well does Butler think that somebody could just say: ‘Well I’m Black’, when they’re not Black, when they have no Black formation, they have no Black legacy, they don’t come from Black parents or a Black world, they just have decided that they feel Black and they want to say they’re Black. Or they want a fellowship, so they falsely claim they’re Black, or they want to belong to a certain community and deceive people in order to achieve that sense of belonging. We’ve seen people who have lied, who have fraudulently appropriated racial or cultural identities, including indigenous ones, and these are all unethical actions. That is not performativity—that is lying. For me, performativity is actually a way of challenging restrictive and oppressive norms, but cultural appropriation is an example of racial oppression. Sometimes one has to make plain what one’s background is, the community from which one comes, the sexuality that is one’s own, or the gender that represents one’s lived reality. In those cases, performativity does not create that history or sexuality or lived reality, but it does make it legible, and sometimes for the first time, or against a way of saying and naming that leaves one effaced and erased. Performativity seeks to break through that erasure, but cultural appropriation is a form of erasure. Obviously, we have to be able to understand the situations in which performativity is operating in order to evaluate its effects. We can, for instance, ask how racial norms consolidate racism through forms of performativity, in which case performativity is a way of analysing a social issue, but not, by itself, something to be celebrated or condemned. It helps us to see how reality is construed, how intelligibility is established and contested, and we might sometimes like that contestation, and sometimes not. Performativity is not its own frame of reference. CJLPA : On the note of the changing terms of reality—you also briefly mentioned your example of Drag queens—what role, if it plays a role at all, does art have to play in performativity? JB : At the time that I used the drag example, I wanted to show that what counts as feminine and masculine can change, and that some traits we take as natural or fixed are, in fact, constituted over time by virtue of practices and repeated styles. But the example was taken to be exemplary of performativity itself, and that produced some consequences I neither anticipated nor wanted. For instance, some drag performers do, in fact, clothe themselves and act in certain ways under very specific conditions, but then ‘return’ to their truer genders in everyday life. This is, of course, not the same as what happens with trans people who are living their gender reality in every aspect of their lives. The idea of a punctual, discrete, and transitory performance was reinforced by the example of drag, but, in fact, gender as lived is another matter. I did not clearly grasp the implications of that example when I wrote about it nearly 35 years ago, but I see it better now. For those who quite legitimately want the reality of their genders recognised, or who prefer to use the language of sex to describe their trans lives, it is important to underscore that sex can be reassigned, that genders can change, and that the sex or gender arrived at by trans people designated their reality. I believe that performativity can still describe that reality, since the language and recognition is achieved by various means. I would now say that gender is the apparatus through which sex is assigned, established, and re-assigned and re-established. Gender is not the cultural form that natural sex assumed, but the process through which that assumption and establishment takes place. In this sense, it is not an identity, but the process through which identity is established. Similarly, performativity is not fluff or artifice, but rather the name for the very consequential process by which subjects are formed and come to identify themselves, establish their reality, and demand recognition. Art is enormously important for me. It was what I missed most, aside from friends, during the pandemic. It has the power to embrace and fix my mind, claim my attention and transform me. CJLPA : Is it a vessel for power or is it more a platform for self-expression? JB : If we are speaking about art or artistic practice, or art objects, we have approached a complex problem. Personally, I love going to museums even though I understand the critique of museums and love both public art and performance. I am also drawn to abstraction, even though I understand the critique of abstraction from several quarters. I’m very often interested in when a painting is finished, in what year, and seek to understand how history is refracted in non-representational modes. That doesn’t mean I don’t love realism, but I do wonder about the ways in which it has been written about. Lukacs interests me, for instance, but his writing also maddens me. Is it realistic to imagine that society gives itself to us as a totality? I suppose I am always somewhat ambivalent in museums. I might want to burrow myself within the frame in order to take in what that painting is asking of me, but it’s very hard as I move around a museum structure not to be saturated with capitalism, with the hurting feet of the guards, the cost of membership, and, of course, the cost of the artworks themselves. One is, after all, roaming around a market. I remember one day I had fully enjoyed a day inside the Whitney in NYC only to exit and find people I knew protesting members of the museum’s board, Warren Kanders, who eventually resigned because his company was selling tear gas used against protestors! How do I allow myself that absorption in painting, that sense of renewal and reconfiguration, that can happen within a frame, or within a play, or even in a performance piece that is provisional without thinking about the infrastructure, who’s paying, who’s profiting? I suppose I am influenced by Brecht who cautioned not only against identification, but absorption as well. I’m very interested in performance studies, and luckily taught in the field a couple of times at UC Berkeley with my colleague, Shannon Jackson, so seeing what happens when performance moves off the proscenium and into the street or various public spaces is important to me. Performance can become part of a strike against museums or other corporate entities, and that counterpoint is very powerful. In general, there is a performance dimension to strikes and protests that is very important for the articulation of political rage but also political sorrow. We see a lot of improvisational art and performance in the Movement for Black Lives, as Patrisse Cullors has shown. I am also aware of the power of plays that were written in classical Athens but have enormous power in contemporary life: Esperanza Spalding’s rendition of Iphigenia is one. But Antigone remains ever-generative; Antigone was played under dictatorial Argentina and then post-dictatorial Argentina. Antigone was played in Colombia, in Ecuador. Colombians in exile performed the play in Mexico City; it was performed in Palestine on a rubble of rocks that used to be somebody’s home, changed into a platform. The Jenin theatre project on which I served on the international board, was all about turning political rage and sorrow into art, especially photography and performance. I think for me, some of the most emotionally powerful and life-changing, but also conceptual-framework-changing events have happened through powerful, powerful performances and powerful art, including poetry. We could document, as well, the way photography has changed our experience of illness, of war, of science, of the virus in ways that have enormous social and political implications. CJLPA : You say how walking through a museum and seeing certain frames, paintings, sculptures, whatever they may be, emotionally affects you, and that art has both positive and negative aspects. I can also see how that could be a source of anxiety for many people, not being able to, for example, walk through the museums and enjoy the art available without the knowledge of how it was retrieved—take, for example, the current scandal with the British Museum and how they retrieve certain historical items. How do we manage that anxiety? JB : I followed Christopher Hitchens’ writings on the Elgin marbles scandal, and I thought it was among the better things he did, really instigating that campaign to return the marbles to Athens. I’ve seen the partial display of those marbles in Athens as well as in the UK, and I’ve deliberately gone between the two sites to see what was stolen and how it was presented by the British Museum. I won’t not go see stolen art, but then part of looking involves seeing how the stealing is framed, and how the frame effaces the crime. Something similar happened in France after the opening of the Musée du quai Branly and art stolen from Africa was identified. After being petitioned by Felwine Sarr from Senegal, Macron agreed to return the art to Africa. Reparations of this kind are crucial to exposing the continuing colonial legacies at work in the art world, including legacies of military destruction and pillage. The repatriation of artworks is a counter-imperialist move that we need to examine and continue to think about, including the way that those legacies have contoured the canon of art history itself, as Banu Karaca has demonstrated. The history of looting is also something we look away from when we become absorbed in the work of art, but maybe we can somehow have both. There are aspects of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism that enter into my ‘seeing’ when I go to museums, but it does not fully preclude becoming claimed by a work of art. It is that seeing moves from one dimension to another, and that the one is always hovering in the background of the other. I think we can allow ourselves that absorption, but also try to figure out what the institutional and labour conditions for this beautiful encounter I’m having are. It doesn’t destroy it for me, but it needs to be part of what I take in when I go. CJLPA : I’m particularly interested in your notion of grievability and your work in the field of necropolitics more generally, and I wanted to ask you a more topical question on this basis. I was wondering whether grievability could be applied to describe the differences we see in the treatment of war victims. Are there differences in the grievability of war victims, for example, in Ukraine compared to Palestinian citizens, or Syrian refugees? And if there is, how do we minimise this? JB : I think there’s no way to think about war without thinking about those who are fleeing war, and that means that we’re thinking about borders and detention practices. Wars are often about contesting or claiming borders, as we know. They can be ways of moving borders or breaking borders. But the border, wherever it is, is the place for the gathering of refugees and the treatment of refugees, the negotiation of alterity, citizenship, and rights of mobility, even rights of existence. Some people, following Michael Walzer, make a distinction between just and unjust war and, according to that framework, an unjust war is obviously being waged against the Ukrainian people (as of 2 June 2022). But is it right to say that the Ukrainians are waging a just war? Or is it better to say that they are engaged in a fully legitimate resistance to military aggression? Those kinds of debates centre on established nations, but let’s remember that nations get established through establishing territorial boundaries and regulating rights of passage. On the border with Poland, radical social inequality accompanies, and qualifies, the general admiration for Polish hospitality. Some refugees merit hospitality, but others clearly don’t. I’m reminded of Mahmood Mamdani’s book Good Muslim Bad Muslim where he argues that the Muslim who can assimilate well, the one who is well educated, who shares cultural or class behaviours and values with Europeans, including secular commitments, stands a chance of becoming the good one. But the one who holds out, affirming their community of belonging, participating in religious or cultural activities that deviate from dominant religious, cosmopolitan cultures, is usually deemed bad or suspect, not only because they adhere to certain religious practises, but because they are seen to adhere: they are publicly regarded as adhering to that community rather than assimilating to a national one, or they wear something that announces that they are in fact religious, or that they belong to a religious tradition and community. I recall Mamdani’s distinction because at the borders of Europe, we are witnessing mechanisms that distinguish between good and bad refugees. It’s been the case for some time that wealthy people can buy their way into citizenship in places like Spain, and that other European nations demand to see bank and investment accounts in deciding who can come in and who can stay. Even as Angela Merkel invited Syrians to Germany—and that was a great thing that she did—she discriminated against a number of North Africans at the border and did not open that same door to them. These are all examples of social inequality, but also decisions about whose lives are worthy of supporting and whose can be abandoned. For those who make those decisions according to national policies, they are all the time distinguishing between those lives that are legible, intelligible, valuable, and those that are clearly not. Even if they never say it to themselves, they are deciding whose lives are dispensable, can be tossed, or can be left to die at the border or drown at sea. For instance, in Honduras, people are living in conditions at borders that not only put them at extreme risk for COVID, but also, now, other diseases. They are living in unsanitary conditions, or without basic medical or health provisions. They are a population that is left to become ill, made increasingly susceptible to illness and to death by the lack of infrastructure provided. Maybe nobody is shooting them or bombing them, but some powers are letting them die. This is a form of slow violence, as Rob Nixon has said. That letting the population die in a way that many countries do—and I think Europe does this as well in its maritime restrictions on immigration over the Mediterranean—constitutes the second form of death-dealing that Foucault describes in Society Must Be Defended. The first might be understood as the deliberate decision of sovereign powers to declare war or sentence someone to death. Putin is emulating that form of sovereign power as we speak. But then there’s this ‘letting die’, which usually happens through policy or through neglect and dispensability. Neglect can be unthinking or it can be deliberate policy, as when Malta turns back leaky vessels filled with migrants. I think that by letting them die, we can call it necropolitical as Achille Mbembe has, I have no problem with that and I use that term myself, but sometimes those forms of death dealing are intertwined and I think we do see that in war. CJLPA : In light of that, should there be a criteria or international law in place so that countries, or specific countries, keep their borders open and welcome refugees with open arms? JB : I think there’s clear racism at the border of Poland, and the Polish government was clearly happier with Ukrainian refugees than with refugees coming from Afghanistan or Syria or North Africa. At work is both racial and religious discrimination. It’s also part of this assimilationist logic that says, ‘Oh you can come to a European country, but you must assimilate to this culture, or be regarded in advance as capable of that assimilation’. Why does anyone make a demand of that sort? Why can’t anyone come and actually change the country, change and enrich the culture of the country? Inviting migrants in implies agreeing to be transformed by new members of the society and, yes, becoming a different country. Yes! Allow the country to evolve into a more international, transnational region, that’s actually enormously hopeful. Multilingualism, that’s no less than fabulous, especially when educational and cultural institutions provide for that, and support that vision. So, although we surely need firmer anti-discrimination laws at the border, that only goes part of the way toward realising the new vision of society that is required. We also need to strengthen international covenants to stipulate that all stateless people have the right to belong somewhere, and that it is the obligation of every state to admit people from whatever origin or location for asylum procedures and to give their petitions fair, transparent, and comprehensive reviews on a non-discriminatory basis. Also, it will be imperative to rethink the state not just as a sovereign entity that defends its borders through military means and hyper surveillance but considers its borders as a portal and a threshold. The border should be rethought as portal and threshold, the site of translation, exchange, and movement, and the state should be rethought as a set of dynamic relations with other territories, regions, and states. It should be defined by that relationality rather than by its sovereign defensive position. CJLPA : What advice would you give to aspiring researchers, students of inequality, or activists? JB : I would say that if you’re a researcher in a university, make sure you do not stay fully enclosed within the university, that you don’t treat the university walls as protection and enclosure. You actually need to insist that those walls become porous and that the communities around you, the broader world, enter the university and help to decide the purpose and plan of research. I think that academics can become very self-referential within the university, and I believe some of the anti-intellectualism on the right comes from not really understanding what we do in universities and why we do it. I think there’s also anti-intellectualism on the left or on the part of those who believe that the internet provides more knowledge than any possible classroom. I don’t know about this term, ‘scholar/activist’, I don’t know if I am that or not: sometimes I’m just a scholar, sometimes I’m just an activist, and sometimes I’m blending, so I don’t really know how to reflect upon that distinction. But I think learning how to go out into the world through other platforms and making our knowledge known, and explaining its value, and handling the challenges to it in various kinds of venues, whether it’s online or in person, is a really important thing for academics to do. If we work in public universities, and the public cannot understand the value of what we do, they will seek to defund us, especially during austerity. Besides, it sharpens our thinking and it connects us with people, so we don’t become hermetically sealed within academic life and too neurotically self-referential. The academy is a place where neurosis can breed dangerously, so one needs to remember to stay connected to a larger world; it lifts one out of oneself and reminds us that we are not the centre of the world. I do think academics at the start of a career should be afforded the chance to wake up in the morning and feel passionate about what they do. Don’t pick the topic that you don’t love because you think it’ll get you somewhere professionally: No. Especially if you’re writing a dissertation or a first book, you must want to see that page when you wake up. You must be eager to get back to where you left off. But that means you have to find your desire and stay with it, and trust that it will yield something that’s valuable to you and to others. CJLPA : At this moment in time what is your current research interest, what are you working on, and what was your motivation behind this interest? JB : Well, I’m writing a book called Who’s Afraid of Gender? which is a critique of the anti-gender ideology movement. I’m trying to take apart their arguments while tracking the phantasms that haunt their thinking, which show the limits of argumentative discourse. Of course, it’s hard to argue with somebody who won’t read the work in question but nevertheless has a firm idea of what it is about. One is confronted with a highly phantasmatic side of anxiety and fear. One also has to think about how to address that. If you can’t work at the level of argumentation and evidence, how do you proceed? How do you address somebody’s massive anxiety and fear and hatred? So, that’s my problem and I’m trying to confront that question. And then I have a long-standing project on Kafka on the law—I guess we could have talked about that—where I am trying to understand, in general, how his writing relates to indefinite detention. Indefinite detention has become the most common carceral practice in the world, and Kafka had a developed premonition about how it works. In particular, he was interested in the status of legal systems when the sequence of a trial and punishment is reversed, that is to say, when one is found guilty first and then the trial and its deferment becomes an indefinitely extended form of punishment. So, I’m also interested in how Kafka thinks about the architecture of law because law is both a temporal and spatial problem in his work. When it takes architectural form, law comes to resemble prisons and their impasses. His literary writing collapses narrative into carceral space and its impasses. CJLPA : What kind of course is feminist philosophy currently taking? JB : I think there are several things going on. I think Black feminism has enormous influence not only in the US and UK, but throughout Europe, Africa, and Latin America. There’s a great deal of work being done by contemporary feminist philosophers on race and gender, but also prison abolition. We have to think about abolitionism as a form of Black feminist philosophy. There continues to be work being done in the philosophy of science relating to reproductive freedoms, personhood, the question of life, care, and the technologies of both reproduction and sex assignment. There is also a fair amount being done on feminist movement politics, especially the feminist strike, bringing forward the work of Rosa Luxemburg into contemporary feminist politics, and a great deal of reflection on both resistance and revolution. Many feminist philosophers are interested in how we think about desire and affect in politics. To answer that question, many feminist philosophers go back to Spinoza or bring Spinoza forward into the present to try to do that—I find those positions very interesting even though I cannot always go along. Decolonial feminism is important for philosophy and for several other fields, engaging feminist thinkers who have written extensively on colonisation such as Rita Segato and Françoise Vergès. CJLPA : Do you have any career memories or regrets that you have as a philosopher or as an activist? JB : I think that Gender Trouble was written when I was trying to secure a permanent job, and I think it was kind of trapped in the French discourse of the time in the US. It was written in a more difficult style than it should have been. Despite its difficulty, it remains popular and people still read it. Perhaps I could have shown more clearly how I was influenced by social movements, especially AIDS activism and LGBTQI emergent movements, but also the history of feminist thought, including Black feminist thought and poetry. I wish that I could have written that book for a broader audience and perhaps with a broader citational base, but I somehow imagined that it would not have much of a life. Of course, I have many regrets in my career, and there were times when I responded to a plea from a friend that ended up putting me in a morally compromised position. I cannot undo that kind of mistake, but I can now live my life differently. One has to be humble in relation to one’s errors, affirm the errancy, as it were, to become a more attentive and responsible person. On the other hand, I have been gifted by the connections that my work has made among readers and translators, the latter group being some of the most important intellectuals I have met. They have introduced my words, and me, to worlds that I would have never understood or known about. So, basically, I feel gratitude. So, I’m much more connected to different parts of the world by virtue of very brilliant translators who spent time with me and who ultimately became my intellectual colleagues and friends. Translation is difficult, frustrating, and transformative, like life. This interview was conducted by Teresa Turkheimer, an MSc student in European and International Public Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her main interest lies in understanding the causes and effects of inequalities that characterise the labour market today, and is hoping to pursue a career in research in the coming years.

Shona Illingworth is a Danish-Scottish artist and Professor of Art, Film and Media at the University of Kent, UK. Her work examines the impact of accelerating military, industrial, and environmental transformations of airspace and outer space and the implications for human rights. She is co-founder with Nick Grief of the Airspace Tribunal ( https://airspacetribunal.org/ ). Recent solo exhibitions include Topologies of Air at Les Abattoirs, Musée—Frac Occitanie, Toulouse (2022–23), The Power Plant, Toronto (2022), and Bahrain National Museum, Manama (2022–23). Illingworth was a Stanley Picker Fellow, is an Imperial War Museum Associate and sits on the international editorial boards of the Journal of Digital War and Memory, Mind & Media . The monograph Shona Illingworth—Topologies of Air was published by Sternberg Press and The Power Plant in 2022 ( https://www.sternberg-press.com/product/shona-illingworth/ ). With over 40 years’ experience as a legal academic in three universities, Nick Grief is now Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Kent where he completed his undergraduate and doctoral studies. Throughout his career he specialised in public international law, international human rights law, and EU law, with particular reference to airspace, outer space, and nuclear weapons. Nick also practised at the Bar for 25 years, mainly as an Associate Tenant at Doughty Street Chambers, where he is now an Honorary Associate Tenant. He was a member of the legal team which represented the Marshall Islands before the International Court of Justice in cases against India, Pakistan, and the UK concerning the obligation to negotiate in good faith towards nuclear disarmament. This interview was conducted in September 2023. CJLPA: First, I just wanted to say thank you both for taking the time to interview with The Cambridge Journal of Law, Politics, and Art  to discuss your work on the Airspace Tribunal, a revolutionary human rights project that considers the case for the freedom of individuals to live without physical or psychological threat from above.[1] So I would just like to start by asking if you can tell us a little bit about the inception of the idea, and how things have progressed thus far with respect to the work of the Tribunal.   Nick Grief : It sounds crazy, but the germ of this idea originated at a meeting that we both attended at the University of Kent in 2016. It was a planning meeting, and I was at the time Dean for our Medway campus. Shona was there as a senior member of her school, and during one of the breaks we found ourselves sitting next to one another. We didn’t know each other, but we got chatting and discovered mutual interests in human rights, airspace, outer space, etc. And that’s what led us to start talking and thinking about this project. I think that’s probably where it dates from Shona, isn’t it?   Shona Illingworth : Yes, that’s the first time we met. We had an immediate connection through our common interests and concerns. The reasons for that are also quite important, particularly considering that I am an artist and Nick is a lawyer.   I grew up on the northwest corner of Scotland in a small community of craft workers that had established itself in a former military early warning station on the edge of the Cape Wrath Range, one of NATO’s most extensive live bombing ranges. It’s a 360-degree range, which aso means that it can be attacked simultaneously by land, air and sea. Twice a year, NATO and its allies conduct Europe’s largest military training exercise called Joint Warrior, using this landscape and airspace as a proxy for places of conflict elsewhere. Up to 20 countries participate in these large-scale ‘war’ exercises, which include live artillery fire, aerial bombardment, anti-submarine ships, and more recently drone technology. Around 75 aircraft are regularly involved across northwest Scotland and numerous warships appear on the horizon.   Most critically, for me, in terms of my relationship with the sky, was that without warning, three or four GR4 Tornado jets could suddenly come in very quickly and very low to drop 1000-pound live bombs on a small island just off the coast. As a child growing up there in the 1970s, the vast open skies of this remote and sparsely populated landscape would instantly collapse into an oppressive lid over our heads. The sonic force was visceral, our spatial world contracting with the overpowering military presence above. It was a complete transformation of our environment through the sheer force of the jets—that level of violence and control.   My parents were part of the 1960s post-war generation looking for another kind of life. They moved to this remote location, also hoping to escape the threat of nuclear annihilation. There was, growing up there, this constant sense of threat. This was a place that had been part of the Chain Home Command during the Second World War, then identified as the site for an early warning station at the start of the Cold War. There was always a sense there of imminent threat coming from the over the horizon.    The military use of the Highland landscape had been an area of focus in my practice for many years.[2] In 2012, I began work on a project called Topologies of Air, during an artist residency at Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in the Outer Hebrides. I was particularly interested in the planning and consultation process for a large expansion of the Hebrides Range, extending from the Outer Hebrides out into the North Atlantic. The Range is used for complex weapons trials and live-firing and is managed by a commercial company called QinetiQ. I’d read the consultation documents, and it was clear to me that the terms of the consultation were very constrained. For example, the economic case presented was that if the expansion didn’t take place, the military may close the Range and jobs would be lost. Employment and the risks of de-population have long been of critical concern for remote communities. The environmental impacts were considered in equally narrow terms.   During the residency, I recorded conversations with people living there, and undertook research. I was interested in the cultural history of the sky and relationships between people in that landscape and the space above. I became very aware of how modernity’s representation of the sky as open and empty contributed to an erasure of the deeper cultural history of the sky and understanding of its place in many different cosmologies. This act of cultural erasure, I would argue, supports the military instrumentalisation of the sky as a ‘sanitised’ space of ‘unlimited altitude’ for weapons testing.[3]    When I returned, I met Nick and discovered that he was a lawyer and law professor with expertise in international airspace law and human rights. When we met again to discuss my research in the Outer Hebrides and the consultation on the expansion of the Hebrides Range, I also described my experience growing of up in the edge of the Cape Wrath Range. Nick asked me whether I thought freedom from the effects of those oppressive forms of occupation above could be a question of human rights. I said, absolutely. Nick then explained how the legal framework for defining airspace had not significantly changed since 1944 and we agreed that this did not reflect the radical transformations in how the sky is now being used. It was during that first meeting that we decided to set up an international people’s tribunal, which we called the Airspace Tribunal, to develop the human rights dimension of airspace and outer space and consider the case for and against a proposed new human right.[4]   NG : Let me just add a little bit of colour on the legal side. My background is as a lawyer specialising in international law and human rights. In particular, I did my PhD on international airspace law, because I’ve always been intrigued by aviation and airspace even as a youngster. Before I went to university, I was fascinated by the concept of airspace and how airspace is controlled. I was particularly fascinated by the legal regime governing international airspace where there is no sovereign territory below, for example, the airspace over the high seas.   One of the first things Shona and I did was to look closely at the airspace over the UK and adjacent to the coast. We were keen to see how these military activities that Shona has described in and around the north of Scotland were provided for in terms of airspace regulation. We plotted the various restricted zones and danger areas on a map of the UK, and it allowed us to see their impact at a glance. Another thing we did was ask whether there were existing human rights laws by which this kind of activity could be challenged with respect to people’s enjoyment of the space above their heads, as live munitions are being used in these test zones.   SI : Just to add to this, during the production of an earlier work of mine called Balnakiel , I was filming the Joint Warrior Exercise from the Range Control Tower on the Cape Wrath Range.[5] I was with cinematographer Bevis Bowden and we were filming a Show of Force, which is a military tactic used to disperse civilians in an area of conflict by bringing fast jets in extremely low over the ground. I didn’t know, however, that the target area for the exercise was the control tower where I was standing. Within seconds, I experienced three GR4 Tornado jets flying incredibly low towards the building. The rush of adrenaline, the fear, the physiological transformation of my body lasted for 48 hours. It was so intense I could not sleep. I say this because even though I knew that I was not under attack or at risk, the impact was overwhelming. It has been incredibly important for the Airspace Tribunal to gain an understanding of the actual lived experience of the expanding militarisation and weaponisation of airspace and increasingly outer space, by hearing from people in different parts of the world who are being subjected to threats, violence and risk of injury or death from above, and who are often living in a perpetual state of anticipatory anxiety which can cause long-term physical, psychological, and physiological harm.[6] Fig 1 and 2. Shona Illingworth, Topologies of Air, 2021. Three-channel digital video and multichannel sound installation, 45 min. Courtesy of the artist. Commissioned by The Wapping Project. Installation view: Topologies of Air, The Power Plant, 2022. Photo: Toni Hafkenschied.

Introduction   It is easy to overlook the endurance of British imperial structures in its former colonies, particularly in the legal and moral frameworks that govern gender and sexuality. Despite the formal end of the British Empire in the twentieth century, colonial legislation that criminalises same-sex relationships and / or gender variance continues to serve as the legal foundation for the persecution of LGBTQ+[1] people throughout the former colonies and prolongs their marginalisation. By the time homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK, many countries had gained independence and did not reform inherited colonial laws. As of 2024, homosexuality remained a crime in 29 Commonwealth countries,[2] representing around half of the total number of UN member states that criminalise homosexuality worldwide.[3] The British Empire was unparalleled in its systematic export of laws criminalising same-sex conduct, leaving an institutional legacy of homophobia unmatched by any other empire.[4] In a comparative analysis of 185 countries, Han and O’Mahoney found former British colonies far more likely to have legislation that criminalises homosexual conduct than colonies of other European empires or countries in general.[5] Colonial anxieties about gender non-conformity also persist: as of 2019, at least 26 states used public order, vagrancy, and misdemeanour offences to harass and criminalise gender-nonconforming people, while at least 15 jurisdictions criminalised gender expression through laws on ‘cross-dressing’, disguise, impersonation, and / or imitation—the vast majority of which originated from British colonial penal codes.[6]   This paper examines the continuity and discontinuity of British colonial-era laws relating to gender and sexuality in India and how these legal frameworks remain contested in contemporary politics. In doing so, it highlights how India’s legal system has functioned not only as a means of governance, but also as an instrument for enforcing moral and ideological codes that sustain exclusion. The paper situates India’s debates over gender and sexuality within their historical context, tracing the evolution of norms from pre-colonial traditions and histories of gender and sexual fluidity to the colonial imposition of Judeo-Christian norms, and finally to contemporary debates shaped by the constitutional promise of equality. Colonial legislation, such as the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) and Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, institutionalised ideals of heteronormativity and a strict gender binary, criminalising those that fell outside of these norms and casting them as threats to the social order. In particular, the paper explores the experiences of India’s hijra community, a gender non-conforming people who form an important part of India’s ‘third gender’, examining their historical significance in South Asia and the enduring influence of colonial laws on the community. Post-independence, India’s Constitution brought commitments to equality, non-discrimination, and freedom of expression, but legacies of colonial morality and normative hierarchies persist in both legal and social spheres. Recent rulings illustrate both the possibilities and limitations of legal reforms in reshaping these norms and hierarchies. Finally, the paper reflects on the contemporary politics of LGBTQ+ rights across the former British colonies, exploring the divergent legal trajectories of countries that are negotiating similar colonial legacies.   Queer identities in Indian cultural history   Records of queer identities in India can be traced back to Hindu mythology and ancient regional folklore, with gender and sexual fluidity abundantly depicted in Indian scripture, literature, and temple art, as well as in ancient texts including the Ramayana and the Mahabharata , which detail narratives of sex changes, homoerotic encounters, and transgender characters such as Shikandi.[7] For instance, the  Hindu deity Ardhanarishvara is reportedly said to have been created by the merging of the god Shiva and his consort Parvati, depicted with a body which is masculine on the right and feminine on the left. This can be interpreted as emblematic of the harmonious bond between husband and wife, but also reflects Shiva’s androgynous identity in this form—the name itself translates to ‘the lord ( Isvara ) who is half ( Ardha ) woman ( Nari )’.[8] Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra —an ‘astonishingly sophisticated’ Sanskrit textbook on social conduct and human relations, dating back to the third century—also describes same-sex relations and non-binary gender identities, and medieval Hindu temples, such as those in Khajuraho, Madhya Pradesh (900-1050 AD), and Bhubaneswar, Odisha (750-1250 AD), explicitly depict homosexuality among the erotic imagery in their sculptures.[9]    Fig 1. 6th century Ravanaphadi cave temple, Ardhanarishvara (half Shiva, half Parvati), Aihole Hindu monuments Karnataka. Fig 2. Ardhanarishvara, Chola period, 11th century, Government Museum, Chennai. South Asia’s third gender   While the acknowledgement of genders outside the male / female binary has recently gained prominence in Western societies, people of varied gender expressions have been accepted as legitimate citizens in South Asia for centuries.[10] Among the most visible in these groups are the hijra community, who are generally phenotypical males or intersex people who adopt a feminine gender identity, some of whom undergo ritual castration.[11] Considered neither men nor women, hijras have long lived outside the Western gender binary and survived the colonial project of elimination to form an important part of the present-day (and legally recognised) ‘third gender’ in India.[12] The concept of a ‘third gender’ is derived from a complex history, encompassing various categories of gender non-conforming identities that have existed in their own right. For instance, khwajasaras (or ‘eunuchs’)[13] held prominent roles in the Sultanate and Mughal empires, providing widely varied services ranging from administrative duties to harem attendance. As in other Islamic courts, their perceived asexuality allowed them to navigate gender-segregated spaces, travelling freely between the mardana (men’s side) and zenana (women’s side), and serving as guardians of Mughal harems. They also had the prerogative to collect taxes and duties in certain areas and, as essential parts of the bureaucracy, many rose to significant positions of power during sixteenth to eighteenth-century Mughal India.[14] Today, hijras view khwajasaras as an important dimension of their past, although they have occupied distinct gendered, social, and temporal categories. Khwajasaras were masculine-embodied (castrated) slaves who worked in various roles, often in close proximity to the emperor (a social function that is now obsolete), whereas hijras expressed femininity and typically occupied a more marginal social position.[15]    Historically and in the present, the hijra community has formed kinship systems, customarily living together and engaging in public performances and dances, as well as collecting donations for their blessings ( badhai ), which are believed to be auspicious, during events such as weddings or childbirth.[16] In the eighteenth century, hijra lineages and badhai  practices were recognised by some Indian polities, and hijra subjects were entitled to state support. The Maratha Kings of Satara granted hijras small cash allowances and rent-free land grants that could be passed down between generations, and other rulers also offered patronage to hijras. In some cases, hijras apparently held a ‘codified right to beg’, but the community also became entangled with prostitution from early on. As such, the social position of hijras in pre-colonial India was somewhat ambivalent, but it nonetheless indicates a level of acceptance of gender fluidity that allowed hijras to ‘survive if not thrive without forcing a resolution’.[17] That there was space for gender non-conforming people to exist and fulfil alternative social roles—which were often associated with considerable authority or auspiciousness—is reflective of a more accommodating and plural society. Same-sex love and romantic friendships similarly existed ‘without any extended history of overt persecution’.[18]    British colonial morality and the policing of gender and sexuality   After the demise of the Mughal empire in the eighteenth century, South Asia was washed over with new norms imposed by British colonial administrators. The tolerance of varying expressions of gender and sexuality in India, long embedded in culture and society, stood in stark contrast to Britain’s Victorian, Judeo-Christian conceptions of a clear ‘male’ and ‘female’ binary and strict heteronormativity, thereby becoming focal points for colonial regulation.[19] The queerphobic sentiments that were previously a peripheral puritanical voice in India thus became dominant under colonial rule. British merchants had been depicting hijras as immoral and ‘disgusting’ people from at least the late eighteenth century, and by the 1850s and 1860s, the community was perceived as a serious cause of concern for the empire.[20] The murder of a hijra, ‘Bhoorah’, in the North-Western Provinces, coupled with accusations of hijras kidnapping, enslaving, and castrating children, prompted a moral panic which quickly translated into intense scrutiny and surveillance.[21]   To the imperial administration, any perceived deviance posed a threat to the colonial order and therefore needed to be controlled. The ‘eunuchs’, as hijras and other non-normative gender identities were referred to in the British colonial language, were rendered an ‘ungovernable people’, who could not be assimilated into respectable Indian society and were subject to ‘gradual extinction’.[22]    From 1860 onwards, the British Empire imposed numerous criminal laws on its colonies, beginning with India, through which it sought to restructure social norms.   The introduction of Section 377 (S377) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) as a legal transfer of the 1533 British Buggery Act made sexual activities ‘against the order of nature’, namely homosexuality, punishable by imprisonment.[23] Gender-nonconforming people, primarily hijras, were then explicitly criminalised in the CTA Part II Act of 1871. The law required the North-Western Provinces and Punjab government to keep a register of all ‘eunuchs’ who were ‘reasonably suspected of kidnapping or castrating children or committing offences under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code’.[24] Those on the register were prohibited from performing and wearing feminine clothing in public (in an effort to eliminate their culture) and barred from living with male children under 17 (so as to prevent the community from expanding). The law also interfered with inheritance by banning ‘eunuchs’ from making wills or gifts.[25] The entire community of hijras in India were impacted, as many sections of the Act were enforced across the whole country and key customs such as public performance and cross-dressing were deemed suspicious and sufficient to implicate them.[26] For instance, in 1884, a hijra named Khairati was tried for an unnatural offence under S377 with little proof besides their habitual wearing of female clothes.[27] In some cases, the law was enforced beyond its scope, effectively criminalising all male cross-dressing. Thus, the law became a tool for producing and policing normative identities in line with colonial morality, and hijras were reduced to objects of moral suspicion, characterised as a form of perverse sexuality.   W omen’s agency and sexualities were also particular sites of anxiety, and the colonial administration sought to extensively discipline them within the boundaries of Victorian morality. For instance, devadasis, women who were symbolically married to Hindu gods and performed dances as part of the rituals in the temples they inhabited, were traditionally respected cultural and religious figures and even enjoyed royal patronage in some cases.[28] Under colonial rule, the devadasi system—and particularly their freedom to exercise relationships with multiple partners—was deemed impure and unacceptable, with these women being recast as prostitutes and criminalised under the Indian Penal Code (1860) and the Contagious Diseases Act (1864).[29] In this way the colonial legal architecture conflated complex social roles with deviance and criminality, subjecting gender identity and any perceived sexual deviance to intense scrutiny, surveillance, and discipline.   Contemporary legal debates surrounding gender and sexuality   By framing gender and sexual diversity as inherently criminal, colonial laws entrenched a moral hierarchy that endures in legal and social frameworks, as well as in deep social stigma. As the following section will explore, these colonial legacies remain at the centre of contemporary legal debates surrounding gender and sexuality in India. While recent legal reforms have attempted to dismantle the structures of normative heterosexuality and the gender binary in line with constitutional principles, the evolution of laws such as S377 and CTA Part II exemplify how the policing of gender and sexuality has persisted long beyond India gaining independence.   CTA Part II and the continued policing of hijras   Hijras today face extreme marginalisation and violence and are ‘pushed to the fringes of society’ where begging and sometimes prostitution become lifelines, and access to employment, healthcare, and justice is uncertain, if at all possible.[30] Despite Part II of the CTA being repealed in 1911, its ideology has been carried forward in various institutions including state legislature and local police practices. For instance, the 1919 Telangana Eunuchs Act—a derivative of the CTA that gave police powers to arrest any ‘eunuch’ found ‘cross-dressing’ or performing and entertaining in public spaces—was retained in the state of Telangana until 2023, when it was declared unconstitutional following a petition by trans activists.[31] Similarly, in the state of Karnataka, Amendment 36A ‘Power to Regulate Eunuchs’ was implemented in the Karnataka Police Act in 2011, which granted police the right to register ‘eunuchs’ who are ‘reasonably suspected of kidnapping and emasculating boys or of committing unnatural offences’—language that is clearly adopted from the 1871 CTA.[32] Registered people are thenceforth prohibited from engaging in ‘undesirable’ acts. After a petition contested the unrestrained and arbitrary power granted to the police to persecute hijras, the local government changed the term ‘eunuch’ to ‘person’ in the law, but this, grievously, only widened the scope of the legislation, thereby facilitating further abuse of power against marginalised communities.[33] The resurgence of such archaic elements of the 1871 CTA illustrates the continued influence of colonial legislation on hijras in contemporary policing, reinforcing discrimination with a perennial threat of arbitrary arrest and prosecution.   Progress and pitfalls: Gender identity rights   Over the past decade, there have been some noteworthy legal reforms that have invoked the Indian Constitution[34] to enhance protections for gender minorities, including by establishing the right to self-determination of gender identity. In 2014, the Supreme Court of India ruled to legally recognise a third gender in response to a petition filed by the National Legal Services Authority of India (NALSA).[35] The Court highlighted transgender persons’[36] human rights based on international treaties, and also discussed the history of transgender persons in India, noting their shift from being respected figures in Indian mythology and Mughal courts to being criminalised under British colonial rule.[37] The Court identified the severe discrimination faced by transgender people in society as a violation of their right to equality (Article 14 of the Indian Constitution), and also expanded the scope of freedom of expression (Article 19(1)(a) of the Indian Constitution) to include the right to express one’s gender through dress, words, action, or behaviour. The judgment also held that discrimination on the grounds of ‘sex’, which is explicitly prohibited under Articles 15 and 16 of the Constitution, included discrimination on the basis of gender (based on one’s self-perception)—an interpretation that effectively prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. Thus, the Supreme Court acknowledged the rights of all persons to self-identify their gender and declared that those who fall outside the male/female gender binary, including hijras, can legally identify as ‘third gender’. The government was directed to ensure recognition of ‘third gender’ in all documents and to create affirmative action quotas for third-gender persons in education and employment, in line with other minorities.[38]    This was a ground-breaking decision that, for the first time, established legal recognition of non-binary gender identities in India and declared their constitutional rights, marking a welcome divergence from the Western gender binary construct and helping to dismantle some of the structures that restrict India’s transgender community from fully and equally participating in society. The judgment has global significance as one of the first comprehensive applications of the Yogyakarta Principles[39] by any national-level court. By contextualising the issue within India’s historical tolerance of gender diversity, the Court also made an impactful statement on the colonial roots of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in a political climate where ‘traditional’ values are frequently weaponised to legitimise discriminatory norms and social hierarchies. In a recent case, the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ruled that trans women were legally entitled to recognition as women, rejecting claims that womanhood applies only to those who can bear children.[40] This case is a further example of the Court demonstrating an acute understanding of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and its vision for universal equality.   On the other hand, some legal changes have proven harmful in practice. The government’s Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 was widely criticised as a step backwards for trans rights, and for undermining the 2014 constitutional right to self-determination. The Act appeared to be a positive development, prohibiting discrimination against transgender persons in education, employment, healthcare, and property access, and seeming to affirm the right to self-determination of gender identity. However, the law has several shortcomings, particularly regarding the mandated procedure for legal gender recognition. To be officially recognised as ‘transgender’, individuals must first obtain a ‘certificate of identity’ from the District Magistrate based on self-declared identity, after which they can apply for a ‘change in gender certificate’ to legally alter their gender. However, this second certificate is only issued with proof of sex reassignment surgery, raising serious concerns about the relationship between legal recognition and bodily autonomy. By putting a condition on legal recognition, the law risks creating a pressure on individuals to undergo medical procedures. This conflicts with the 2014 Supreme Court verdict and with international standards such as the Yogyakarta Principles, which oppose medical procedures being set as a condition for legal recognition of gender identity. Consequently, petitions have been filed before the Supreme Court, challenging the constitutionality of the Act.[41]    The path to decriminalising homosexuality   The colonial-era S377 legislation (the criminalisation of homosexuality) remained the foundation for the persecution of the LGBTQ+ community in India until 2018. Despite previous unsuccessful petitions, NGO Naz Foundation fought for the removal of S377 in 2006, arguing that it violates articles of the Indian Constitution, including Article 15, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth.[42] In a landmark judgement, the Delhi High Court repealed the act   in 2009 . However, in 2013, the Supreme Court of India overturned this judgement after appeals made by religious groups, leaving it up to parliament to legislate on the issue, meaning homosexuality was once again illegal.[43] Given that the Supreme Court legally recognised a third gender in 2014, this put third-gender people in a strange situation: on the one hand, they were now constitutionally protected, but on the other hand, they could be criminalised for consensual gay sex.[44] Finally in 2018, following further petitions, the Court expanded the understanding of discrimination on ‘grounds of sex’ under Article 15, and S377 was annulled on the basis that it violated citizens’ fundamental rights.[45] This landmark decision legitimised sexual fluidity, correcting a historical injustice against the queer community and marking a promising step towards decolonising domestic law. However, it also illustrated the resistance to overturning imperial laws in a society where heterosexual norms remain deeply embedded in domestic institutions.   The next battle: Legalising same-sex marriage   Despite the pivotal ruling decriminalising same-sex relationships in 2018, the fight for equality persists, with same-sex marriages yet to be legalised (at the time of writing). In 2023, India’s Supreme Court declined to extend recognition of non-heterosexual marriages in response to petitions filed by activists seeking a gender neutral interpretation of the Special Marriage Act, 1954 (SMA).[46] The SMA allows civil unions irrespective of religion but recognises marriage only between a ‘male’ and a ‘female’, thereby excluding same-sex couples and contradicting the constitutional rights to equality and dignity . Marriage in India carries significant social and legal significance and is deeply tied to notions of family, legitimacy, and respectability, granting legal entitlements to inheritance, next of kin status, joint adoption, and surrogacy.[47] The denial of marriage equality perpetuates the marginalisation and exclusion of same-sex couples in society, reaffirming heteronormative values and indicating a broader reluctance to reimagine hegemonic family models. Strong opposition to the proposed reform came from the government and religious leaders, who argued that same-sex unions are ‘not comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children’.[48] This reasoning highlights how the law continues to serve as the state’s instrument for codifying dominant moral ideologies about sexuality. While the five-judge bench was divided on several matters, the court ultimately upheld the constitutionality of the SMA, concluding that there is no fundamental right to marry and leaving it up to parliament to legislate on the issue. Crucially, this ruling not only reflects the resistance to opening up marriage to same-sex couples, but also the Court’s institutional constraints and the substantial legal consequences of amending the SMA, which intersects with an array of laws on divorce, succession, and inheritance. Striking down the SMA was equally unviable because it remains an important piece of legislation that facilitates interfaith marriage. The Chief Justice’s directives to the government to end all discrimination against queer couples signal will for reform, but the complexities of this case suggest that the journey towards achieving marriage equality is likely to be protracted.[49]   Colonial legacies, constitutional visions, and the politics of gender   Contemporary legal debates over gender and sexuality demonstrate a persistent tension between entrenched colonial legacies and normative social hierarchies on the one hand and the constitutional promise of equality, non-discrimination, and freedom of expression on the other. Questions remain about why laws that are inconsistent with the principles of the Constitution have been retained and why challenges to these laws have also been unsuccessful. For instance, why did it take until 2018 to remove S377? Why do some states retain derivatives of the draconian CTA Part II legislation? Colonial legal and epistemic frameworks that criminalised homosexuality and codified a rigid binary of ‘male’ and ‘female’ as naturalised and exclusive categories have been absorbed and reinforced by social, cultural, and religious institutions that continue to regulate bodies and sexualities in India. Socialised gender roles underpin heteronormative family systems, as well as structures of labour, care, and reproduction, sustaining a binary organisation of gender as a basis for social and economic relations. Non-normative gender and sexual identities remain the subjects of heightened political anxiety, with religious groups and conservative sections of society often mobilising against progressive legal reforms that seek to expand rights for minorities. Making changes to the ‘status quo’ therefore becomes difficult to achieve.   Contemporary legal debates about gender and sexuality also reflect an inconsistent application of constitutional morality. Bhatia identifies two distinct and conflicting readings of the Indian Constitution: the conservative reading, which is the dominant interpretation that the Supreme Court has placed upon the Constitution; and the transformative reading, which uncovers the Constitution’s founding aspirations for political and social transformation.[50] The Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on LGBTQ+ rights has oscillated between these two readings, affirming and expanding rights in some cases (eg recognising the right to self-identify gender in 2014) and restricting progressive change in others (eg declining to legalise same-sex marriage in 2023). This ambivalence reflects a broader societal reality: despite legal recognition of queer identities, normative frameworks that sustain exclusion and inequalities remain entrenched in political, social, and cultural institutions. As such, achieving substantive equality will require moving beyond formal legal recognition to interrogate these frameworks both in the public and private domain. A commitment to transformative constitutionalism—in which the state is directed towards achieving certain social goals—offers a means for challenging these norms and fostering a more genuinely inclusive society that reflects the constitutional principles of equality, dignity, non-discrimination, and freedom of expression.   The broader global politics of LGBTQ+ rights   Shared histories, colonial legacies and legal trajectories   The debates concerning gender and sexuality in India are part of a broader global landscape in which states have navigated similar colonial legacies, but demonstrate divergent jurisprudential trajectories. The British administration exported Victorian norms and institutionalised the criminalisation of homosexual conduct throughout its global colonies by transferring and adapting the IPC, making homosexuality socially unacceptable and deeply stigmatised across Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean.[51] Much like India, histories of other countries demonstrate that strict heteronormativity and gender binary systems were far from the convention in pre-colonial societies, as many indigenous cultures similarly recognised and accommodated gender and sexual fluidity. King Mwanga II of Buganda (who reigned from 1884-97 in present-day Uganda) was widely known to engage in relations with other men.[52] More broadly, there is evidence of same-sex relationships throughout pre-colonial Africa.[53] The people of Igbo and Yorùbáland (in present-day Nigeria) also existed outside of Western gender and patriarchal constructs before British colonisation. Traditionally, women were not differentiated from or subordinated to men in these societies and were highly autonomous and powerful; evidenced through social institutions such as matrilineality, dual sex systems, gender flexibility in social roles, and neuter linguistic elements.[54] In Malaysia, too, there are records from as early as the fifteenth century of gender-nonconforming or androgynous priests and courtiers (‘sida-sida’) who held positions in the royal courts of the Malay sultans.[55]   Today, there is significant variation in the jurisprudence pertaining to homosexuality in former British colonies. In some states, courts have repudiated colonial legacies, invoking constitutional morality to decriminalise same-sex relationships and affirm equality, dignity and privacy as foundational values. For instance, in 2016, the Supreme Court of Belize found that Section 53 of the Penal Code, which criminalised same-sex activity between men, was unconstitutional and violated the rights to dignity, privacy, equality before the law and non-discrimination.[56] Similarly, when Botswana overturned the colonial-era anti-gay laws in 2019, the judge explicitly stated that they were a ‘British import’ developed ‘without the consultation of local peoples’.[57] In contrast, other states have retained or even strengthened colonial-era surveillance and persecution, with legal punishment varying from imprisonment to the death penalty.[58] In 2023, for example, Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Act which increased the prison sentence for attempted same-sex conduct to ten years and introduced the death penalty for acts considered ‘aggravated homosexuality’.[59] This stark divergence between countries reflects the varied and complex negotiations of these colonial legacies. Yet it also evidences some commonality among states that have adopted an explicitly anti-colonial—or indeed ‘transformational’—interpretation of the Constitution to dismantle hierarchies, reimagine morality, and foster greater equality.   The contemporary politics of LGBTQ+ rights   The jurisprudential trajectories of postcolonial states are shaped by and contribute to a broader global politics of LGBTQ+ rights, where shared colonial legacies intersect with transnational actors, geopolitics, and the development industry. In one respect, there has been a growing recognition of LGBTQ+ rights as an indicator for modernity and development in Western (especially Western European) politics and the international development industry. Termed ‘homodevelopmentalism’, LGBTQ+ inclusive development agendas have gained prominence amidst the increasing employment of a human rights based approach as a development paradigm.[60] This phenomenon can be situated within the broader discourse of what Puar termed ‘homonationalism’, whereby ‘the right to, or quality of sovereignty is now evaluated by how a nation treats its homosexuals’, ie nations are evaluated on how ‘advanced’ they are depending on how they respond to homosexuality.[61] In this context, the ‘queering’ of development cooperation and policies, ie the demand for LGBTQ+ rights by governments, international organisations such as the UN, and Western capitalist institutions, has enforced a power dynamic that has proliferated the international politicisation of LGBTQ+ rights and mandated a global trend towards decriminalisation.[62] For instance, after Uganda announced an Act in 2014 that would have made homosexuality punishable by death, the World Bank rescinded a $90m loan and the country’s sovereign credit rating suffered.[63] Uganda annulled the Act in response, but in 2023, the country backtracked to pass the anti-homosexuality law that imposes the death penalty for ‘aggravated’ cases, and has again faced sanctions by The World Bank and the US.[64] In 2011, UK Prime Minister David Cameron considered making bilateral aid to Commonwealth nations conditional on the decriminalisation of homosexuality and in 2018, Prime Minister Theresa May urged Commonwealth nations to reform outdated anti-gay legislation preserved from British colonial rule.[65]    While these demands from the West may heighten pressure on states to take progressive measures with regard to decriminalisation, it is important to recognise that (apparent) advancements in LGBTQ+ rights do not always correlate with advancements in freedom and / or democracy, particularly when LGBTQ+ movements are co-opted by capitalist, imperial, and political forces. In the context of global politics, ‘pinkwashing’ refers to states that adopt an ‘LGBTQ+ friendly’ image to signal progressiveness and modernity as a means to gain international political acceptance, despite ambiguous political aims, or whilst neglecting other human rights issues.[66] Much of the discussion on pinkwashing points to Israel’s ‘gay-friendly public relations campaign’, which is viewed as a deliberate strategy to conceal or legitimise violations of Palestinians’ human rights and ongoing settler colonialism by projecting an image of progressiveness on the global stage and reframing narratives about the occupation of Palestine through the lens of (sexual) modernity.[67] Pinkwashing as a political strategy only works in the context of homonationalism, where the status of ‘gay-friendly’ or ‘homophobic’ has implications for international relations.[68] While legal reforms favouring LGBTQ+ communities may therefore be increasingly spotlighted, they do not necessarily reflect broader progress in democratic freedoms or human rights. Critically, they may also obscure the state’s failure to protect other marginalised communities. In India, the striking down of S377, while significant, potentially creates a ‘halo effect’, diverting attention from systemic issues such as the persecution of religious minorities and the entrenched violence against lower caste communities.[69] As Tamalapakula observes, India’s caste system perpetuates a ‘graded patriarchy’ that so deeply normalises violence against Dalit women that their rape is scarcely recognised as a violation at all.[70] This systemic violence and disregard for their rights is not only tolerated, but often reinforced by the same societal and state mechanisms that attempt to project an image of modernity and progressiveness internationally. Thus, viewing state support for LGBTQ+ rights as a proxy indicator of development or human rights risks neglecting broader realities, particularly in contexts where the LGBTQ+ movement is co-opted for sinister political purposes.   On the other hand, many Commonwealth nations scrutinise the demands of LGBTQ+ rights legislation from the West as a form of ‘modern-day Western interference’, asserting that tactics such as donor sanctions are inherently coercive and reinforce unequal power dynamics between donor countries and recipients.[71] There are also criticisms that LGBTQ+ inclusive development strategies reproduce narratives of Western civilisational exceptionalism by creating a divide between the ‘sexually developed’ West and the ‘sexually backward’ rest.[72] The imposition of human rights paradigms formulated at the international level can be met with resistance by states from the Global South, especially where those norms are perceived to interfere with a state’s autonomy to legislate. There are also contestations about the legitimacy of the Global North imposing human rights norms at the global level. Neo-colonialism refers to external policy and economic control that undermines the sovereignty and autonomy of former colonies, resulting in their continued exploitation.[73] However, in some states, the notion of neo-colonialism has become weaponised to equate rejecting LGBTQ+ rights with rejecting neo-colonialism: former Zimbabwean President Mugabe, for instance, called homosexuality a ‘white disease’.[74] The staunch moralities that were planted under Empire have grown so entrenched in some cultures that, somewhat perversely, the notion of homosexuality as something Western, and therefore suspicious, resounds throughout many countries. Thus, the politics of LGBTQ+ rights is shaped by a combination of homonationalism, anti-neo-colonialism, and domestic political agendas.   Conclusion   This paper has reflected on the impact of British colonial laws that imposed puritanical moral codes of heteronormativity and binary gender norms in India, erasing earlier ambiguities and recasting complex social roles and cultural practices through the lens of immorality and deviance. These legal interventions were underpinned by orientalist assumptions that hypersexualised aspects of Indian society and sought to categorise social and economic relations within a strict gendered framework . The colonial imposition of laws S377 and CTA Part II criminalised and pushed to the fringe communities that were previously accommodated within society. In particular, the attempted erasure of hijras resulted in an enduring legacy of exclusion and marginalisation, leaving the community today facing ‘ambivalence around their legal and socio-political status’.[75] By framing gender and sexual diversity as inherently criminal, colonial laws entrenched a moral hierarchy that continues to inform contemporary policing and lasts in deep social stigma. Recently, there have been notable shifts for LGBTQ+ rights in India. Legal challenges to outdated laws, such as the litigation brought by the Naz Foundation, demonstrate how grassroots and community-led initiatives can achieve meaningful change on a case-by-case basis. The Supreme Court’s invocation of constitutional morality in cases such as the 2014 ruling to recognise a third gender and the 2018 decriminalisation of homosexuality reflect the transformative potential of the Indian Constitution to promote greater inclusiveness and pluralism. While these rulings have demonstrated a significant departure from colonial moral constructs, legal and social frameworks remain entangled in structures of heteronormativity and patriarchy. Achieving substantive equality therefore requires not only progressive jurisprudence but also a broader interrogation of the normative hierarchies embedded within India’s political, social, and cultural institutions.   In the global context, the British Empire appears ‘substantially responsible’ for the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation that remains prevalent amongst many former colonies, where the imposition of homophobic penal codes into indigenous cultures that did not previously criminalise gender and sexual variance has had deep and lasting impacts.[76] Post-independence jurisprudential trajectories have proven to be complex and uneven: while some countries have repudiated colonial-era laws, others have increased penalties for homosexual conduct. Comparative study on the evolution of jurisprudence across former British colonies could therefore help to foster greater understanding of these divergent pathways and identify commonalities. Given the global politicisation of LGBTQ+ rights, it is important to recognise the colonial origin of the norms that reproduce exclusion, violence and inequality worldwide. Reframing decriminalisation as a form of decolonisation not only challenges the persistence of imposed colonial moralities, but also reclaims those indigenous epistemologies that historically demonstrated greater pluralism. Anushka Sisodia Anushka Sisodia is a researcher at ODI Global, where her work applies political economy analysis to global issues including conflict and fragility, gender, digital societies, and development finance. She has previously led projects for UN Women UK and the Loomba Foundation, written for The Diplomat, and worked with Cambridge Central Asia Forum. Anushka holds an MPhil in Development Studies (Distinction) from the University of Cambridge and a BSc in Geography with Economics (First-Class Honours) from the LSE.  [1] Acronym used to describe lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and / or questioning people. Other commonly used acronyms include LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi, and trans), LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer), and LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and intersex). [2] The term ‘Commonwealth’ is used here to refer to the political association of countries that largely constitute former British colonies, although today any country can voluntarily join the modern Commonwealth. [3] International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), ‘Legal Frameworks | Criminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual acts’ < https://database.ilga.org/criminalisation-consensual-same-sex-sexual-acts > accessed 1 October 2025. There is some discrepancy in these statistics between sources. [4] Alok Gupta, ‘This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism’ ( Human Rights Watch , 17 December 2008) < https://www.hrw.org/report/2008/12/17/alien-legacy/origins-sodomy-laws-british-colonialism > accessed 1 October 2025. [5] Enze Han and Joseph O’Mahoney, ‘British colonialism and the criminalization of homosexuality’ (2014) 27(2) Cambridge Review of International Affairs 268-88. [6] Human Dignity Trust, ‘Injustice Exposed: The criminalisation of transgender people and its impacts’ (17 May 2019) 9 < https://www.humandignitytrust.org/resources/injustice-exposed-the-criminalisation-of-transgender-people-and-its-impacts/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [7] Kavita Kané, ‘Storytelling: LGBT themes in Hindu mythology’ ( Indian Express , 14 July 2020) < https://indianexpress.com/article/parenting/blog/storytelling-lgbt-themes-in-hindu-mythology-5273332/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [8] Betty Seid, ‘The Lord Who Is Half Woman (Ardhanarishvara)’ (2004) 30(1) Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 48-9. [9] Wendy Doniger, ‘On the Kamasutra’ (2002) 131(2) Daedalus 126. [10] Pre-modern historical references are situated broadly in South Asia, given that the national borders of contemporary India emerged only in recent history. [11] Gayatri Reddy, ‘Geographies of contagion: Hijras , Kothis , and the politics of sexual marginality in Hyderabad’ (2006) 12(3) Anthropology and Medicine 255-70; Jessica Hinchy, ‘The eunuch archive: Colonial records of non-normative gender and sexuality in India’ (2017) 58(2) Culture, Theory and Critique 127-46; Jessica Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850-1900  (Cambridge University Press 2019). [12] For further reading on the paradigms of classification pertaining to hijras see Vinay Lal, ‘Not This, Not That: The Hijras of India and the Cultural Politics of Sexuality’ (1999) 61 Social Text 119-40. [13] In the South Asian context, the word ‘eunuch’ itself is a legacy of the colonial-era translation and classification of a broad range of distinct social practices. See Emma Kalb, ‘A eunuch at the threshold: mediating access and intimacy in the Mughal world’ (2023) 33(3) Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 747-68. [14] Lubna Irfan, ‘Nature of slavery and servitude in Mughal India’ (2022) 13(4) South Asian History and Culture 466-80; Ina Goel, ‘Understanding Caste and Kinship within Hijras, a “Third” Gender Community in India’ in Katie Nelson and Nadine T Fernandez (eds), Gendered Lives: Global Issues  (State University of New York Press 2022); Anjali Arondekar, For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India  (Duke University Press 2009; Kristofer Rhude, ‘The Third Gender and Hijras’ ( Harvard Divinity School , 2018) < https://rpl.hds.harvard.edu/religion-context/case-studies/gender/third-gender-and-hijras > accessed 1 October 2025. For further reading on the role of eunuchs in Mughal courts see Ruby Lal, ‘Harem and eunuchs: Liminality and networks of Mughal authority’ in Almut Höfert, Matthew Mesley, and Serena Tolino (eds), Celibate and Childless Men in Power: Ruling Eunuchs and Bishops in the Pre-Modern World  (Routledge 2017). [15] Jessica Hinchy, ‘Hijras and South Asian historiography’ (2022) 20(1) History Compass; Kalb (n 13). [16] Jessica Hinchy, Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: The Hijra, c.1850-1900  (Cambridge University Press 2019). [17] Lal (n 12) 131. [18] Ruth Vanita, ‘Homosexuality in India: Past and Present’ (2002) 29 IIAS Newsletter 10 < https://scholarworks.umt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1002&context=libstudies_pubs > accessed 1 October 2025. [19] Amy Bhatt, ‘India’s sodomy ban, now ruled illegal, was a British colonial legacy’ ( UMBC Magazine , 14 September 2018) < https://magazine.umbc.edu/indias-sodomy-ban-now-ruled-illegal-was-a-british-colonial-legacy > accessed 1 October 2025. [20] Laurence W Preston, ‘A Right to Exist: Eunuchs and the State in Nineteenth-Century India’ (1987) 21(2) Modern Asian Studies 371-87. [21] Hinchy (n 16). [22] Hinchy (n 16) 9, 100. [23] Enze Han and Joseph O’Mahoney, British Colonialism and the Criminalization of Homosexuality: Queens, Crime and Empire (Routledge 2018). [24] Shakthi Nataraj, ‘Criminal “folk” and “legal” lore: the kidnap and castrate narrative in colonial India and contemporary Chennai’ (2017) 8(4) South Asian History and Culture 523-41; Gayatri Reddy, With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India  (University of Chicago Press 2005). [25] Jessica Hinchy, ‘The eunuch archive: Colonial records of non-normative gender and sexuality in India’ (2017) 58(2) Culture, Theory and Critique 127-46. [26] Nataraj (n 24). [27] Arondekar (n 14). [28] Janaki Nair, ‘The Devadasi, Dharma and the State’ (1994) 29(50) Economic and Political Weekly 3157-67; Shriya Patnaik, ‘Marginalizing the matriarchal, minority subject: a critical analysis of human rights and women's reform projects in colonial and postcolonial India through the case-study of the “Mahari-Devadasi”’ (2021) 2(1) Electronic Journal of Social and Strategic Studies 59-88. There is evidence of exploitation and coerced prostitution within the devadasi system in some parts of India, both historically and in the present, however it is generally understood that the intention of the original role of the devadasi was devotion to temple service. See Tameshnie Deane, ‘The devadasi system: an exploitation of women and children in the name of god and culture’ (2022) 24(1) Journal of International Women’s Studies. [29] Nair (n 28); Kalpana Kannabiran, ‘Judiciary, Social Reform and Debate on “Religious Prostitution” in Colonial India’ (1995) 30(43) Economic and Political Weekly 59-69; Jisa Thomas and SP Vagishwari, ‘Surveilling bodies, governing morality: Biopower and the contagious diseases acts in colonial India’ (2025) 33 Ethics, Medicine and Public Health. [30] Ajita Banerjie, ‘Decriminalising Begging Will Protect Transgender Persons From Police Harassment’ ( The Wire , 17 August 2018) < https://thewire.in/rights/decriminalising-begging-will-protect-transgender-persons-from-police-harassment > accessed 1 October 2025. [31] Ankita Dhar Karmakar, ‘How A Regressive Transgender Act Was Finally Thrown Out’ ( Behan Box , 17 July 2023) < https://behanbox.com/2023/07/17/how-a-regressive-transgender-act-in-was-finally-thrown-out/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [32] Nataraj (n 24); Jayna Kothari and Diksha Sanyal, ‘Courts Recognizing Transgender Rights’ ( Oxford Human Rights Hub , 28 February 2017) < https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/courts-recognizing-transgender-rights/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [33] Banerjie (n 30); Bindu N Doddahatti, ‘Karnataka Trans Policy May Be a Step in the Right Direction, But Needs Work’ ( The Wire , 20 March 2018) < https://thewire.in/lgbtqia/karnataka-trans-policy-may-be-a-step-in-the-right-direction-but-needs-work > accessed 1 October 2025; Jessica Hinchy, ‘The long history of criminalising Hijras’ ( Himal Southasian , 2 July 2019) < https://www.himalmag.com/long-history-criminalising-hijras-india-jessica-hinchy-2019/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [34] The Indian Constitution, which came into force on 26th January 1950, is the foundation of the country’s political and legal systems and of its citizens’ fundamental rights. [35]  National Legal Services Authority v Union of India  [2014] INSC 275. NALSA provides legal services for marginalised communities. [36] Transgender was described as an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity or gender expression does not conform to their biological sex. This encompasses those who do not identify with their sex assigned at birth, including hijras/eunuchs who, in the petition, describe themselves as ‘third gender’, identifying as neither male nor female. [37] Christina Zampas, ‘Embracing difference – India’s ground-breaking judgment on transgender rights’ ( Amnesty International , 2 May 2014) < https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2014/05/embracing-difference-india-s-ground-breaking-judgment-on-transgender-rights/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [38] ‘India court recognises transgender people as third gender’ ( BBC News , 15 April 2014) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-27031180 > accessed 1 October 2025; National Legal Services Authority (n 35). [39] A set of international principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity drawn up in 2006 by human rights experts. See Zampas (n 37). [40] Ankush Kumar, ‘Indian court rules a transgender woman is a woman’ ( Washington Blade , 25 June 2025) < https://www.washingtonblade.com/2025/06/25/indian-court-rules-a-transgender-woman-is-a-woman/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [41] Kyle Knight, ‘India’s Transgender Rights Law Isn’t Worth Celebrating’ ( Human Rights Watch , 5 December 2019) < https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/12/05/indias-transgender-rights-law-isnt-worth-celebrating > accessed 1 October 2025; Alexandra Oancea, ‘The Shortcomings Of India’s New Transgender People’s Act’ ( Human Rights Pulse , 29 November 2021) < https://www.humanrightspulse.com/mastercontentblog/the-shortcomings-of-indias-new-transgender-peoples-act > accessed 1 October 2025. [42] Maria Thomas, Madhura Karnik, and Michael Thomas, ‘Timeline: The struggle against section 377 began over two decades ago’ ( Quartz , 21 July 2022) < https://qz.com/india/1379620/section-377-a-timeline-of-indias-battle-for-gay-rights > accessed 1 October 2025. [43] Han and O’Mahoney (n 23). [44]  BBC News (n 38). [45] Gautam Bhatia, ‘Indian Supreme Court Decriminalizes Same-Sex Relations’ ( Oxford Human Rights Hub , 6 September 2018) < https://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/indian-supreme-court-decriminalizes-same-sex-relations/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [46] Geeta Pandey, ‘India Supreme Court declines to legalise same-sex marriage’ ( BBC News , 17 October 2023) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-65525980 > accessed 1 October 2025. [47]  Supriyo v Union of India  [2023] INSC 920; Hannah Ellis-Petersen, ‘India’s supreme court declines to legally recognise same-sex marriage’ Guardian (London, 17 October 2023) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/17/india-same-sex-gay-marriage-supreme-court-decision-verdict > accessed 1 October 2025. While the SMA cannot be interpreted to include non-heterosexual couples, transgender persons in heterosexual relationships can marry under the existing framework. [48] Arpan Chaturvedi, ‘India government opposes recognising same-sex marriage’ ( Reuters , 12 March 2023) < https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-government-opposes-recognising-same-sex-marriage-court-filing-2023-03-12/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [49] ‘Plea for Marriage Equality: Judgement Summary’ ( Supreme Court Observer , 18 October 2023) < https://www.scobserver.in/reports/plea-for-marriage-equality-judgement-summary/ > accessed 1 October 2025; ‘India: Failure to legalise same-sex marriage a ‘setback’ for human rights’ ( Amnesty International , 17 October 2023) < https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/india-failure-to-legalise-same-sex-marriage-a-setback-for-human-rights/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [50] Gautam Bhatia, The Transformative Constitution: A Radical Biography in Nine Acts  (HarperCollins India 2019). [51] Han and O’Mahoney (n 5). Countries that directly inherited laws criminalising homosexual conduct from the British Empire include: Australia, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Botswana, Brunei, Eswatini, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Hong Kong, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Mauritius, Myanmar (Burma), Nauru, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tanzania, Tonga, Tuvalu, Uganda, Samoa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. [52] Thabo Msibi, ‘The Lies We Have Been Told: On (Homo) Sexuality in Africa’ (2011) 58(1) Africa Today 55-77. [53] Leah Buckle, ‘African sexuality and the legacy of imported homophobia’ ( Stonewall , 1 October 2020) < https://www.stonewall.org.uk/news/african-sexuality-and-legacy-imported-homophobia > accessed 1 October 2025. [54] Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses  (University Of Minnesota Press 1997). [55] Neela Ghoshal, ‘“I’m Scared to Be a Woman”: Human Rights Abuses Against Transgender People in Malaysia’ ( Human Rights Watch , 24 September 2014) < https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/25/im-scared-be-woman/human-rights-abuses-against-transgender-people-malaysia > accessed 1 October 2025; Mayang Al-Mohdhar and Sarah Ngu, ‘Uncovering Malaysia’s Rich History of Gender and Sexual Diversity: Challenging the Narrative of LGBT Rights as “Western” and “Un-Asian”’ ( Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières , 1 July 2019) < https://www.europe-solidaire.org/spip.php?article49802 > accessed 1 October 2025. [56] ‘A History of LGBT Criminalisation’ ( Human Dignity Trust , 17 September 2025) < https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/a-history-of-criminalisation/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [57] Buckle (n 53). [58] Daniele Paletta, ‘ILGA World Updates State-Sponsored Homophobia Report: “There’s Progress In Times Of Uncertainty”’ ( ILGA , 15 December 2020) < https://ilga.org/news/ilga-world-releases-state-sponsored-homophobia-december-2020-update/ > accessed 1 October 2025. [59] ILGA (n 3); Ashwanee Budoo-Scholtz, ‘Uganda’s President Signs Repressive Anti-LGBT Law’ ( Human Rights Watch , 30 May 2023) < https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/05/30/ugandas-president-signs-repressive-anti-lgbt-law > accessed 1 October 2025. [60] Christine Klapeer, ‘Queering Development in Homotransnationalist Times: A Postcolonial Reading of LGBTIQ Inclusive Development Agendas’ (2018) 22(2-3) Lambda Nordica 41-67. [61] Jasbir Puar, ‘Rethinking Homonationalism’ (2013) 45(2) Rethinking Homonationalism 336-9; Jasbir Puar and Maya Mikdashi, ‘Pinkwatching And Pinkwashing: Interpenetration and its Discontents’ ( Jadaliyya , 9 August 2012) < https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/26818 > accessed 1 October 2025; Sarah Schulman, ‘Israel and “Pinkwashing”’ New York Times  (New York, 22 November 2011) < https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/opinion/pinkwashing-and-israels-use-of-gays-as-a-messaging-tool.html > accessed 1 October 2025. [62] Han and O’Mahoney (n 5). [63] Fox Odoi-Oywelowo, ‘No, Uganda is not making it illegal to be gay (again)’ ( Al Jazeera , 6 June 2021) < https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/6/6/no-uganda-is-not-making-it-illegal-to-be-gay-again > accessed 1 October 2025. [64] ‘Uganda's President Museveni approves tough new anti-gay law’ ( BBC News , 29 May 2023) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-65745850 > accessed 1 October 2025. [65] ‘Cameron threat to dock some UK aid to anti-gay nations’ ( BBC News , 30 October 2011) < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15511081 > accessed 1 October 2025. Pippa Crerar, ‘Theresa May says she deeply regrets Britain's legacy of anti-gay laws’ Guardian (London, 17 April 2018) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/17/theresa-may-deeply-regrets-britain-legacy-anti-gay-laws-commonwealth-nations-urged-overhaul-legislation > accessed 1 October 2025. [66] The term ‘pinkwashing’ in relation to LGBTQ+ issues emerged in the 2010s by gay rights movements, referring to the practice of capitalising on alleged support for LGBTQ+ rights as a way to profit or to distract from another agenda. Pinkwashing may also be used to refer to the corporate appropriation of Pride and ‘rainbow capitalism’. [67] See citations at (n 61). [68] Puar (n 61). [69] Sue A Cooper, Krishnamurthy K Raman, and Jennifer Yin, ‘Halo effect or fallen angel effect? Firm value consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and reputation for corporate social responsibility’ (2018) 37 Journal of Accounting and Public Policy 226-40. [70] Sowjanya Tamalapakula, ‘Who is a woman and who is a dalit?’ (no date) 3(1) Anveshi Broadsheet on Contemporary Politics 14-5. [71] Odoi-Oywelowo (n 63). [72] Klapeer (n 60); Daryl WJ Yang, ‘From Conditionality to Convergence: Tracing the Discursive Shift in Homo-Developmentalism’ (2020) 46(1) Australian Feminist Law Journal. [73] Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism  (International Publishers 1965). [74] Buckle (n 53). [75] Sarah Elizabeth Newport, ‘“Unnatural Offences”, Postcolonial Problems: The ambivalent position of hijras in contemporary Indian law and literature’ (2018) 38(1) South Asian Review 87-99 [quotation from abstract]. [76] Han and O’Mahoney (n 5).

Introduction   Western thought can be pervasive. It has spread from Europe outwards, often to the detriment of other ways of knowing, supplanting preexisting bases. Some post-colonial authors have explored these cultural encounters and clashes through literature and critical theory. In his Globalectics , Ngũgĩ explored how, in the period prior to the colonial encounter, autochthonous thought and knowledge existed and thrived.[1] This is in contradiction to the dominant Western view, which holds that thought and philosophy arose through contact with Western ‘civilizations’: that the colonies only came to exist, epistemologically, because of this contact. Ngũgĩ argues that colonial knowledge aimed to construct a particular perception of reality that sought to erase colonized peoples prior to their ‘discovery’ through conquest.[2]   My eureka moments around whose knowledge matters arrived through formal education. In high school my class took a fieldtrip to New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where I was introduced to high art and culture. The experience was transformational. The majesty of the museums, the scale of the art works, and their colours and forms, not to forget their setting in a global city, represented the sheer possibilities of life and I was drawn in. After moving to the UK, I again engaged with Western art works and representational culture in museums as an undergraduate, but this time was curious about art from outside the Western canon.   In particular, ethnographic artefacts created within the context of daily life were represented differently from the art market driven value of museums and gallery pieces. Yet ethnographic artefacts were also traded and valued for their aesthetic and artistic qualities, as Steiner documents.[3] These works were predominantly from former European colonies in Africa and included performance masks and Nkisi medicinal figures (fig 1). Among them high art existed, as seen in the Benin Plaques (from current day Edo State, Nigeria) made using the lost wax technique that pre-dated colonial contact (fig 2). Post-contact, European artefacts such as manilla , crescent-shaped metal rings made in Europe and used by the Edo people as currency, were incorporated into some representations, documenting intercultural exchange. Western artists like Picasso incorporated African sculpture into their works. While also documenting intercultural exchange, underpinning the juxtaposition was the difference between simple representational art and complex conceptual art. Despite being included by Western artists, artworks produced in service of the everyday tended to remain outside the high art canon, as something ‘other’, located in ethnographic museums, with anonymous works categorised regionally as representative of specific cultures and periods.   Fig 1. Nkisi Nkondi (artist unknown, 1801-75). Art Institute of Chicago. Fig 2. Plaque (artist unknown 1501-1700). Art Institute of Chicago. Later, as an academic instructing higher education students, I have again experienced how knowledge and experiences are differentially represented, whether from the global Western view or from a local African one. During a film screening about international development and reconciliation between the Hutus and the Tutsis in Rwanda, in which Paul Kagame was presented as a champion for peace and unity, one student from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) walked out. Later, she explained that Kagame was responsible for perpetuating the genocide, especially in the DRC, and that his perceived character among Western audiences should not be the only interpretation.   Western interpretations and validations can undermine and obfuscate alternative ways of knowing and being. In this article, the focus shifts to bioethics and its attendant notions of personhood, comparing Western and African conceptualisations. This aims not only to better understand their similarities and differences, but also to amplify an African alternative for consideration within the Western canon.   What is Bioethics?   Questions about the beginning of life, through IVF, stem cell research, or abortion, and end of life, such as advance directives or assisted dying, are the concern of bioethics. Bioethics is an applied form of ethics, a branch of moral philosophy, which strives to provide guidance for life and death decision making. It centres on the norms by which we live our lives and tends to sit outside of more abstract contemplations of existence or being, as explored through metaphysics and ontology. Bioethics can also extend to other living entities, such as animals and the natural environment, being worthy of care, respect, and consideration.[4] It fundamentally draws on our societally internalised morality[5] as bioethical values underpin our everyday thoughts and actions.   Bioethics, as it is generally practiced, has Western origins, arising in the twentieth century in response to some of the most egregious violations against persons and their autonomy or ability to self-determine. In response to these atrocities, codes were developed, such as the Nuremberg Code (1949), the Belmont Report (1979), and Principlism,[6] each of which underpins informed consent as the practical manifestation of autonomy. These ethical guidelines clearly enunciate that individuals hold the authority to self-determine and define under which conditions their autonomy would be violated. Duties between healthcare practitioners and patients date back to the Hippocratic Oath and the Code of Hammurabi, both of which existed before the common era.   Ethics and moral guidelines were also present in precolonial societies. Akan (Ghanaian) proverbs attempted to address common assumptions and beliefs about human experience through a ‘synthetic’ or unified interpretation.[7] Proverbs provided insight and guidance on how to live, for oneself and as part of a community. An individual’s identity is therefore connected to and defined by engagement with others.[8] Bioethics in Africa is rooted in these communitarian systems of ‘collective responsibility, community participation, and engagement’ that underpin society.[9] The ethical norm lies in the individual obligation to fulfil their share of that collective responsibility.   Individuals exist in both Western and African contexts. In the former, individuals hold inviolable ‘natural’ autonomy; in the latter, individuals are ‘natural’ members of a society, who require society to realise their potential.[10] Ajei and Myles review autonomy and contest informed consent as it is currently framed within Western logics, questioning to what degree a Western person is exerting their autonomy in any given situation when having to rely on the knowledge of others to make their decision. That is, how can a cancer sufferer be said to make an informed decision about treatment when they understand so much less about cancer or treatment outcomes than their doctor? This questioning is not limited to African bioethicists but also includes legal scholars who question the degree of being ‘informed’ in the informed consent giving process.[11] Ajei and Myles also extend notions of relationality to Western thought, where healthcare practitioners, again, are rooted in beliefs about doing good and not harming and would therefore see compliance with their recommendations as the right thing to do—the only thing to do.[12] This suggests that consent and autonomy, even in individualised Western contexts, are not as independently generated as the concept implies.   When teaching students whose traditions and history align more with communitarian ethics than individualist ones, to presume Western individualist bioethics as the baseline for ethical values would be a further injustice of erasure and silencing of alternative systems of knowing; it would also exclude recognition of the power and knowledge differentials in any decision-making processes. Delving deeper, it is necessary to understand what makes a human being a person in each context, Western or African, and how this informs autonomy. Personhood—Patient or Agent   Western and African bioethics each draw a distinction between being a human being and being a person, and what moral status each holds. Moral status can be seen as a duality, where a recipient (patient) experiences the effects caused by an actor (agent).[13] Broadly speaking, patient-centred ethics is relevant to Western philosophy and agent-centred ethics is relevant to African philosophy.[14] In the west, the patient-centred approach suggests that the patient is like an object who possesses attributes (ie humanity, consciousness, or rationality) which indicate personhood. This idea of a possessor of properties aligns with the concept of ‘Western possessive individualism’, often associated with people surrounding themselves with material possessions, whether through seventeenth-century cabinets of curiosities (fig 3) or contemporary collections named for the benefactor (such as the Tate or Guggenheim), and the status this confers.[15] In a Western bioethical context, the focus is on the object of morality, the patient and the attributes they possess, and not the subject of morality, the agent and what they do.[16] In the Western view, there are arguments over which attributes determine personhood status. For some, foetuses or individuals who are braindead constitute persons, due to being human beings. For others, those same entities would not be persons.[17] The deciding factor is whether the patient possesses certain qualities that constitutes personhood. Fig 3. The museum of Ole Worm (1655, engraving). Wellcome Collection. Conversely, in African traditions, the action that someone undertakes is also factored in when ascribing personhood. Achebe notes that for the Igbo of Nigeria, ‘every generation will receive its own impulse and kinesis of creation’, such that overemphasizing the product undermines each generation’s (or person’s) development through the process.[18] The fetishization of possession undermines the character development in striving for moral perfection.[19] Tangwa locates actions as the source of morality, arguing that ‘human persons are not morally special [as patients], they are morally liable [as agents]’.[20] The Western version is the ‘minimal definition’ of personhood (based on characteristics possessed), whereas the African version proposes the ‘maximal definition’ of personhood, based on the measure of the excellence of the moral agent.[21] As such, a human being must work to attain personhood through their actions and intentions to continually better themselves for the purpose of bettering their community. Achieving one’s potential is therefore not a self-serving end. Persons become so through caring for one another in a shared way of life.[22]   For some African philosophers, the community overshadows the individual. For others, it does not. Ghanaian philosopher Gyekye questions the personhood of a robotic automaton who unthinkingly abides by the group will.[23] Although a person is dependent upon social relations, such dependence does not ‘dissolve her individuality within a broader notion of community’.[24] This is because a person’s individuality remains. While an individual is a member of a community and that community aims to help that individual achieve moral virtue, it still comes down to the individual to act.[25] The deciding factor is how much the individual did the moral work to become a person. A person is at once both free and not free, due to their individuality and the pressure imposed upon them from the community.[26]   Yet the attainment of personhood by these standards could suggest that if society does not deem one to have worked for the welfare for others, they could be denied personhood. This would have material and existential implications, such as death sentences for being LGBTQI+, healthcare denial for abortion, or refusal to approve of stem-cell research.[27] Atuire aims to reconcile these contemporary bioethical dilemmas besetting Africa through an alternative yet still indigenous view of personhood. He maintains the African theorisation of personhood as underpinned by the patient/agent duality which confers both privileges and duties: what is owed to an object (patient) and what a subject (agent) owes to others. Differing from some African bioethicists, however, Atuire asserts that object moral status is a condition of all human beings, irrespective of any specific capacities they hold. Being human is inherently relational and this fact alone confers object moral status. To this he adds subject moral status, for which individual actions toward collective human flourishing are accounted. Full moral status, ie full personhood, is accorded only to those beings with both object and subject moral statuses.   Atuire acknowledges traditional African philosophers’ wish to eschew what is seen as the reach of Western influence and its technological advance; however, he questions their complete refutation as a false ideological bid to return to ‘precolonial culture’ and its ‘uncontaminated reality’,[28] stating that these issues are concrete challenges in Africa, in need of ethical and practical attention. Instead of ‘dislodging’[29] or ‘exorcising’[30] Western influence, in a bid to return to an imagined pre-colonial past, he recommends active engagement with these contemporary concerns toward the development of practical and locally relevant solutions .[31]   With these moral statuses explained, Atuire focusses his attention on the question of abortion, something which impacts millions of women in Africa while garnering divergent ethical views. An embryo or foetus would be accorded object moral status as part of the human species. Object moral status denotes vulnerability and a need for heightened societal protection. Rather than spurning the pregnant person who seeks an abortion as someone rupturing traditional African values by not contributing to human flourishing through taking the birth to full term, Atuire extends the notion of vulnerability to them, as patients owed care. In doing so, he recognises their distress in having an unwanted pregnancy, the stigma and long-term social harm of bearing an ill-conceived child, and the potential death faced through unsafe abortions outside of the community’s sight.   Subject moral status comes from acting for one’s community. Therefore, Atuire argues, to abandon a pregnant person to their plight of an unwanted pregnancy would not be serving humanity, nor would it be exhibiting communal humanism on the part of other members of the community. His argument rests on a reconsideration of whose vulnerability matters. He cites the traditional African ethicists’ attention to an agent’s sympathy—of having ‘sympathetic identification with the interests of others, even at the cost of a possible abridgement of one’s own interests’[32]—through which they fulfil their duty to the community and exercise social virtue. By reframing vulnerability to include the pregnant person as a patient, his proposal demonstrates how traditional African ethical frameworks can account for and incorporate contemporary bioethical challenges besetting African societies, while remaining congruent to a communitarian ethic. His argument to sympathise with the patient could also reframe the rights-based approach to abortion within Western contexts, to one that aligns within patient-centred ethics.   Moving forward   This article seeks to advocate for an alternative to Western ways of knowing and being through a comparison to African perspectives in art and ethics. In so doing, it attempts to broker a dialogue between Western and African viewpoints, and to suggest that their values, while different, are not opposed. It also hopes to suggest that there is more to be gained from engaging with each another than there is in remaining apart.   Western perspectives tend to revolve around attributes possessed by individuals, whereas African perspectives tend to value processes and actions taken for the benefit of communities. This can be seen in the art collections amassed by individuals versus the qualities of forging both objects and character, through actions undertaken. That said, gaps appeared on both sides. In Western contexts, this centred around the concept of autonomy, where the precept of self-direction is tempered by acquiescence to medical authority. Similarly, in African contexts, self-subsummation to the will of the community was refuted, as automatons could not also be moral agents taking action for the betterment of the group.   These examples demonstrate that in the fields of art or ethics, once aware of our own restrictions, a space emerges for wider reconsideration. Dialogue between Western philosophy and African philosophy could offer Westerners moral tools through which to consider contemporary challenges.[33] At the same time, such dialogue could address current and emerging bioethical issues in Africa, by engendering theory that aligns with African sensibilities.[34] This dialogic approach would better serve international classrooms by shifting entrenched philosophical divisions and opening pathways for change. In global contexts, it is this reckoning with both indigenous and imported values that gives rise to informed, inclusive, and relevant information necessary to address contemporary concerns. Each side alone is insufficient as important aspects remain unresolved. Recognising commonalities amid philosophical differences can enrich all engaged. Julie Botticello Dr Julie Botticello is an anthropologist, who has worked in academia since completing her PhD in 2009 on Yoruba-Nigerians and their aspirations for wellbeing in the post-colonial context. Post-doctorate, her research interests have remained focussed on post-colonial migrants and other marginalised communities, whether in relation to health, work, or education, to affirm alternative knowledge bases in our interconnected, yet heterogenous, globalised world. Critically, Dr Botticello’s research questions how technological advances in reproductive health reshape ethical frameworks, especially in settings marked by historical and epistemic inequalities. Specifically, this research pathway explores the confluences of African and Western perspectives on bioethics and biotechnology in reproduction, considering how the advancement of technology, combined with epistemic transnationalism, challenges accepted norms.   Currently, Dr Botticello serves as the Program Director for the BSc in Health Sciences and a Senior Lecturer at the University of New Haven (UNH), in Connecticut, USA. In 2024/25, she held a Faculty Fellowship with the Center for Teaching Excellence on inclusive pedagogy, and as part of the Yale Prison Education Initiative, expanded higher education access to incarcerated women in a Federal Prison. Previously, she was the Course Leader for the Public Health BSc degree, led the Athena Swan Gender Equality self-assessment team, and served as a Senior Lecturer for the School of Health, Sport and Bioscience, at the University of East London, UK.   [1] Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing  (Cambridge University Press 2012). [2] ibid 30. [3] Christopher Steiner, African Art in Transit  (Cambridge University Press 1994). [4] Caesar Atuire, ‘African Perspectives of Moral Status: A Framework for Evaluating Global Bioethical Issues’ (2022) 48(2) Medical Humanities 238-245. [5] Godfrey Tangwa, ‘The Traditional African Perception of a Person: Some Implications for Bioethics’ (2000) 50(5) Hastings Center Report 39-43. [6] See Tom Beauchamp and James Childress, Principles of Biomedical Ethics  (8th edn, Oxford University Press 2019). [7] Kwame Gyekye, An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme (Temple University Press 1995) 21. [8] Oche Onazi, Human Rights from the Community  (Edinburgh University Press 2013) 38. [9] Yaw Frimpong-Mansoh, ‘Bioethics: Traditional African Perspective’ in Yaw Frimpong-Mansoh and Caesar Atuire (eds), Bioethics in Africa, Theories and Praxis  (Vernon Press 2019) 49. [10] Martin Ajei and Nancy Myles, ‘Personhood, autonomy and informed consent’ in Frimpong-Mansoh and Atuire (n 9) 77-94. [11] Radhika Rao, ‘Informed Consent, Body Property, and Self-Sovereignty’ (2016) 44 Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics   438. [12] Ajei and Myles (n 10). [13] Kurt Grey and David Wegner, ‘Moral Typecasting: Divergent Perceptions of Moral Agents and Moral Patients’ (2009) 96 Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 505. [14] Kevin Behrens, ‘Two “Normative” Conceptions of Personhood’ (2011) 25 Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy 103-118. [15] James Clifford, ‘Objects and Others’ in George Stocking (ed), Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (University of Wisconsin Press 1985). [16] Tangwa (n 5) 40. [17] Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (3rd edn, Cambridge University Press 2011). [18] Chinua Achebe, ‘Foreword’, in Herbert Cole and Chike Aniakor (eds), Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos  (University of California Press 1984). [19] Motsamai Molefe, An African Ethics of Personhood and Bioethics: A Reflection on Abortion and Euthanasia  (Palgrave MacMillian 2020). [20] Tangwa (n 5) 40. [21] Ifeanyia Menkiti, ‘Person and Community in African Traditional Thought’ in RL Wright (ed), African Philosophy: An Introduction  (University Press of America 1984) 132. [22] Thaddeus Metz, ‘An African Theory of Moral Status: A Relational Alternative to Individualism and Holism’ (2012) 15 Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 387-402. [23] Kwame Gyekye, Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience  (Oxford University Press 1997). [24] Ajei and Myles (n 10) 87. [25] Molefe (n 19) 36 [26] Ajei and Myles (n 10) [27] Caesar Atuire, ‘A Prolegomenon to Bioethics in Africa: Issues, Challenges and Commonsensical Recommendations’ in Frimpong-Mansoh and Atuire (n 9). [28] Atuire (n 4) 244. [29] Molefe (n 19) 10 [30] Kwasi Wiredu, ‘An Oral Philosophy of Personhood: Comments on Philosophy and Orality’ (2009) 40(1) Research in African Literatures   8-18. [31] Atuire (n 4) 238. [32] Kwasi Wiredu and Kwame Gyekye, Person and Community  (Council for Research in Values and Philosophy 1992) 194. [33] Tangwa (n 5). [34] Atuire (n 4) 238.

Tschabalala Self (b. 1990 Harlem, USA) lives and works in Hudson Valley, New York. Tschabalala is an artist and builds a singular style from the syncretic use of both painting and printmaking to explore ideas about the black body. She constructs depictions of predominantly female bodies using a combination of sewn, printed, and painted materials, traversing different artistic and craft traditions. The formal and conceptual aspects of Self's work seek to expand her critical inquiry into selfhood and human flourishing. Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Espoo Museum of Modern Art, Espoo (2024); Highline, New York (2024) Brooklyn Museum, New York (2024); FLAG Foundation, New York (2024); Barbican, London (2024); CC Strombeek, Grimbergen, Belgium (2023); Desert X, Coachella Valley (2023); Kunstmuseum St Gallen (2023); Le Consortium, Dijon (2022); Performa 2021 Biennial, New York (2021); Haus der Kunst, Munich (2021); Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf (2021); Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore (2021); ICA, Boston (2020); Studio Museum Artists in Residence, MoMA PS1, New York (2019); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2019); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2019), amongst many others. Gabriella Kardos : The Fourth Plinth commissions make us look at the world in different ways, addressing issues of importance for British society. They point a mirror to our contemporary world, they embody ideas which need to be expressed in concrete form to remind us of important issues we are facing today. How do you view Lady in Blue within this context?   Tschabalala Self :   Lady in Blue is a sculpture that pays homage to a young, metropolitan woman of colour—a quotidian figure, like many one might encounter in contemporary London. Lady in Blue is not a figure from the historical or political past, but rather a symbol of our shared present and future ambitions. She reflects equity through representation, acknowledgement, and action, where all global citizens are exalted and appreciated for their unique contributions, and a future where the ordinary individual is recognised for their extraordinary capabilities. She expresses resilience and grace through the complications of our ever-evolving modern world.   Inspired by a desire to bring a contemporary woman to Trafalgar Square, Lady in Blue adds a new perspective to the public space. Unlike Henry Havelock, Charles James Napier, or George Washington, this anonymous woman is not a real person but an icon; she represents many individuals rather than the adulation of one. This symbolism allows all who interact with the sculpture to imbue her with their own personal relationship and take meaning from her placement.   This figure would be the first sculpture of mine to depict a walking figure. Movement and walking are associated with agency in my work. The fact that my figures are often ‘on the move’ speaks to their ability to assert their own will and exist within their own reality, rather than existing solely for the edification of the viewer. Similarly, I feel there is great political power in showing a woman walking in the public sphere as opposed to being posed or static: the gesture illuminates the forward moment of all women collectively. Fig 1. Lady in Blue (Tschabalala Self) Model for Fourth Plinth Commission, Trafalgar Square, London 2026 © Tschabalala Self, Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias, London