The Precariousness of Homonationalism: The Queer Agency of Terrorism in Post-9/11 Rhetoric

Abstract

Abstract After the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, people from across the political spectrum offered explanations for the terrorists’ motivations and searched for where to place the blame. Figures that featured centrally in the Cold War, such as the “homosexual-communist-subversive,” would reemerge in new forms in the discourse of this burgeoning War on Terror, including the racialized figure of the “queer-immigrant-terrorist.” This article analyzes conservative media discourse that blamed former Congressman Barney Frank and his “gay agenda” for the attacks due to Frank’s influential role in passing the 1990 Immigration Act. It also explores how conservative and mainstream media reports and commentaries constructed the lead hijacker, Mohamed Atta, as “queer,” and how this (racialized and culturally specific) queerness was argued to be his primary motivation for the attacks. Reading these two kinds of discourse in relation to each other shows that “queerness” becomes the agency of terrorism, and this logic maps onto even the most “homonormative,” white gay bodies.

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