Heaven and Earth: From the Guest Editors

One of the unexpected reminders of the continued anxiety elicited by queer bodies emerged in the final stages of preparing this manuscript for publication when the image we had selected for the cover was vetoed by Duke University Press. The intended image was the one on the following page: Heaven and Earth, by Kent Monkman (Cree/English/Irish), one of Canada's most celebrated contemporary multidisciplinary artists and a man of great generosity, who was more than happy to offer permission for us to reproduce the image for this issue. This particular painting offers important ironic commentary on the sexualized history of colonialism, but it also reverses perceived power dynamics, repositioning the familiar status of Native bodies (often those of women) as submissive victims of the colonial erotic to assertive and enthusiastic agents of unashamed sexual subjectivity while also intimating the penetrability of white male bodies.

It's certainly a provocative painting —while a casual first glance might presume a moment of transparent sexual violence, a closer look challenges this assumption. Are the men smiling? Is the Indian pinning the white man's arms behind him, or is he helping to remove his lover's shirt? The wounded bison isn't running away —if anything, s/he is distracted by the curious scene that is taking place elsewhere on the land. (And both bow and arrow quiver are absent from the painting, so the agent of injury isn't necessarily one of these men.)

And then there's the erection. The unobtrusive, barely noticeable white penis rising up to greet the prairie sky. While not something to which we paid much attention (in fact, most of us didn't even notice it until the controversy arose), it became the center of intense interest to Duke University Press. It was deemed unsuitable for reproduction in the books catalog, and then subsequently it was dropped as the cover image altogether, with the suggestion that it be replaced by a less provocative image. The justifications for this decision revolved around the public nature of that particular penis: Duke argued that while content inside the journal had a context that readers knowingly engaged, an image circulating more publicly on the outside cover was "out of context" and thus legally problematic. (We never did get an answer as to what the much-cited legal issues were, or specifically as to why an erect white penis could have the power to instigate a legal whirlwind.)

Figure 1.

Heaven and Earth. Courtesy of Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK, www.kentmonkman.com

It would be an understatement to say that we were furious. We're still angry. This decision contradicted the entire point of the special issue itself insofar as it capitulates to assumptions about what constitutes public decency —assumptions that the work of GLQ and Duke's other publications in queer studies have done much to challenge. It casts as pornography the celebrated satirical art of one of North America's finest contemporary Indigenous artists. Most frustrating of all, it's a reminder that sexual queer bodies are ambiguously dangerous, especially when they also challenge racial hierarchy, and should therefore be hidden, even in the context of a university press widely known for its commitment to cutting-edge scholarship in queer and race studies. To quote Mark's quite succinct response: "All this struggle over a white penis, seriously? —just way too symbolic."

Along with GLQ editors Ann Cvetkovich and Annamarie Jagose, we argued for the retention of Heaven and Earth as the cover image, but to no avail —Duke was not persuaded. We considered a cover that read CENSORED BY DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS in bold letters, but after sober reflection decided instead to ask Kent Monkman if we could print another one of his fine paintings on the cover, with Heaven and Earth accompanying this note of protest within. As one of our goals was to make more people familiar with his work, this seemed the most constructive response. We'd be remiss if we...