ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a global southern perspective on theorising and brings together thinking in poststructural, posthumanist and new materialist perspectives on queer kinship, queering practices and affective relations and the 'forgetting' of race. It provides how queer theory as public pedagogy is used to support neoliberal constructions of queer subjects that in turn serves the workings of the neoliberal state, as well as how queer subjects resist and reimagine these relationships. Attention to 'LGBT mainstreaming' has arguably reinforced global geopolitical hierarchies, whereby a country's record on sexual and gender equality becomes conflated with its level of successful modernisation and civilisation. Changes in queerly intimate lives across the globe have led to the perceived democratisation of queer and trans* sexual relations, familial constellations and the transnational mainstreaming of LGBTQ 'rights'.
