Race and the Critique of Marriage

This essay considers whether the achievement of “marriage equality” marks a distinct social and historical event and changed context, one that queer theory in particular must pause for, grapple with, and perhaps even rethink itself in relation to. It problematizes and interrogates the national temporality that marriage equality institutes on us and on our inquiries. And it argues for critique as a specific politics of knowledge, one that interrogates the link between the concrete production of a rational temporality and state power. Through queer of color critique it reveals the inextricably braided epistemological conditions that make marriage equality compatible with the abrogation of the Voting Rights Act and black political autonomy. And it challenges queer theory to take up race as an alternative contingent foundation for thinking about and engaging the time we collectively inhabit and the projects of queer theory.