After Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush declared, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” Bush’s assertion was not simply jingoist bravado—it encapsulates the civilizationalist moralism that has motivated and defined the United States since its beginning, linking the War on Terror to the nation’s settlement and founding.

In Queer Terror, C. Heike Schotten offers a critique of U.S. settler-colonial empire that draws on political, queer, and critical indigenous theory to situate Bush’s either/or moralism and reframe the concept of terrorism. The categories of the War on Terror exemplify the moralizing politics that insulate U.S. empire from critique, render its victims deserving of its abuses, and delegitimize resistance to it as unthinkable and perverse. Schotten provides an anatomy of this moralism, arguing for a new interpretation of biopolitics that is focused on sovereignty and desire rather than racism and biology. This rethinking of biopolitics puts critical political theory of empire in dialogue with the insights of both native studies and queer theory. Building on queer theory’s refusal of sanctity, propriety, and moralisms of all sorts, Schotten ultimately contends that the answer to Bush’s ultimatum is clear: dissidents must reject the false choice he presents and stand decisively against “us,” rejecting its moralism and the sanctity of its “life,” in order to further a truly emancipatory, decolonizing queer politics.

"An urgent and provocative book that is indispensable reading for anyone seeking a better understanding of terrorism, the War on Terror, Islamophobia, settler colonialism and empire, Thomas Hobbes, the liberatory potential of queer critique, and the relationship between these." - Perspectives on Politics

"Queer Terror is a polemical must-read for scholars of biopolitics, native studies, queer theory, and the Global War on Terror." - Contemporary Political Theory

"In the face of settler sovereignty’s efforts to cure and conquer queers, terrorists, and savages who fail to fit the
biopolitical mold of 'the good life,' Schotten offers nothing less than a robust call to remain savagely incurable as a means of resisting US settler colonialism." - Theory and Event