Theorising Gender, Sexuality and Settler Colonialism: An Introduction

'Hoke-tee', the cover image offered to this issue by Taskigi/Dine artist Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, presents a protean site for considering how our contributors advance theories of settler colonialism. Taken from the series Portraits of Amnesia, 'Hoke-tee' portrays juxtapositions that interrupt any narrative of the moon as terra nullius. Whose human existence becomes legible once the moon appears as a site traversed by humans: in body, but also in memory, or in history? We know his---a white heteropatriarchal national manhood achieved here by having mined rare earths, fabricated massive technologies, and invested in capital's projection to send him and his white brethren to this place. But what crosses the frame, unnoticed by a gaze he directs always forward, and elsewhere: a child, whose dress may be elevating, whose chair may be transporting a historical awareness and multi-generational presence long-defiant of his Manifest Destiny?