Frontmatter and Editorial

Abstract

In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:

Is marriage a cruel institution that preserves religiously saturated nuclear family structures, normalizes heterosexual citizenship, and conceptualizes all those who reject its universalizing good life claims as “‘affect-aliens’” (Ahmed 30)? Is it an out-dated concept of the past, since more and more young people all over the world voice their unwillingness to ever enter nuptial bonds? Yet, how to tackle the multi-faceted debates over queer-inclusive marriage, taking place in liberal and queer liberal, queer radical and openly homophobic conservative circles? Or controversies over marriageable age and the racialized Othering of migrant and refugee communities? Surely, there are no easy or universal truth answers to the above, intentionally provocative, intrinsically polarizing and always deeply ideological questions. After all, questions of marriage in its gendered, cultural and socio-political implications call for nuanced and contextualized theory formation, for caution not to fall into the trap of simplified oppositions, discriminatory heterocentric or Eurocentric ethical violence or the displacement of differentiated desiring subjects.