What the fuck? Surviving fantasies of sexual violence in the professoriate

Abstract

K. S. León (2021) has proposed the need to “unfuck” criminology’s colonial investments via the possibilities offered by Latino criminology. However, to “‘unfuck’ criminology’s colonial inheritances,” we introduce three intervening premises: sexual politics are central to the uses and understandings of “fuck,” sexual violence is central to colonialism, and colonialism is central to academic governance. We argue that Latina/o/x criminologies’ calls for decolonization must contend with sexual governance as a cohering feature of Western institutions’ colonial foundations, and that the academy is one such institution. In other words, we assert that contending with sexual violence is a mandate for academics in fields that grapple with colonial violence—like Latinx criminology—to disrupt the structures and practices that enable sexual violence as a regular feature of academic discipline, exclusion, and punishment. We build with Latinx/a/o studies scholarship to challenge three harmful fantasies upheld in mainstream criminology: (1) academic work is distinct from sex work; (2) criminologists do not enact or experience sexual violence; and (3) due process can protect us from sexual violence.