ABSTRACT
The polarising label “honour crimes” in relation to some incidents of domestic violence in the UK is not only a political ploy to target marginalised communities of South Asian descent, but also a means through which (post) empire continues to describe its superiority over its (post) colonial subjects. This chapter argues that domestic violence in marginalised groups is often re-imagined and re-conceptualised according to ongoing legacies of colonial narratives that stick to certain bodies. Sara Ahmed’s model of affective economies illustrates how emotions, such as hate, when mobilised by the imagined white subject towards the foreigner/-migrant, work in tangible ways to create particular affects. These affects construct dichotomies that mark out the normative subject that loves the nation—a nation being invaded by and through the presence of the “Other”. In this context, honour crimes appear within Western liberal societies like the UK as the uncanny return of the repressed (that is, the resurfacing of archaic codes of honour), producing hyper affective responses of disgust and horror. The accrual of such moralising affects is fuelled by a crisis of hegemony, in which white British subjects seek to maintain dominance over migrants in this post-colonial age. Despite a seeming recognition of domestic violence, the horrors of honour rely upon the suppression and re-representation of violence against women in British South Asian communities.
