The politics of in/visibility: carving out queer space in Ul'yanovsk

<p>In spite of a growing interest within sexualities studies in the concept of queer space (Oswin 2008), existing literature focuses almost exclusively on its most visible and territorialised forms, such as the gay scene, thus privileging Western metropolitan areas as hubs of queer consumer culture (Binnie 2004). While the literature has emphasised the political significance of queer space as a site of resistance to hegemonic gender and sexual norms, it has again predominantly focused on overt claims to public space embodied in Pride events, neglecting other less open forms of resistance.</p><p> This article contributes new insights to current debates about the construction and meaning of queer space by considering how city space is appropriated by an informal queer network in Ul’ianovsk. The group routinely occupied very public locations meeting and socialising on the street or in mainstream cafés in central Ul’ianovsk, although claims to these spaces as queer were mostly contingent, precarious or invisible to outsiders. The article considers how provincial location affects tactics used to carve out communal space, foregrounding the importance of local context and collective agency in shaping specific forms of resistance, and questioning ethnocentric assumptions about the empowering potential of visibility.</p&gt

Introduction: anthropology's queer sensibilities

This special issue addresses vital epistemological, methodological, ethical and political issues at the intersections of queer theory and anthropology as they speak to the study of sexual and gender diversity in the contemporary world. The special issue centres on explorations of anthropology’s queer sensibilities, that is, experimental thinking in ethnographically informed investigations of gender and sexual difference, and related connections, disjunctures and tensions in their situated and abstract dimensions. The articles consider the possibilities and challenges of anthropology’s queer sensibilities that anthropologise queer theory whilst queering anthropology in ethnographically informed analyses. Contributors focus on anthropologising queer theory in research on same-sex desire in the Congo; LGBT migrant and asylum experience in the UK and France; same-sex intimacies within opposite gender oriented sexualities in Kenya and Ghana; secret and ambiguous intimacies and sensibilities beyond an identifiable ‘queer subject’ of rights and recognition in India; migrant imaginings of home in Indonesian lesbian relationships in Hong Kong; and cross-generational perspectives on ‘coming out’ in Taiwan and their implications for theories of kinship and relatedness. An extensive interview with Esther Newton, the prominent figure in gay and lesbian and queer anthropology concludes the collection

Nebuliser therapy in the intensive care unit

The relationship between identity, lived experience, sexual practices and the language through which these are conveyed has been widely debated in sexuality literature. For example, ‘coming out’ has famously been conceptualised as a ‘speech act’ (Sedgwick 1990) and as a collective narrative (Plummer 1995), while a growing concern for individuals’ diverse identifications in relations to their sexual and gender practices has produced interesting research focusing on linguistic practices among LGBT-identified individuals (Leap 1995; Kulick 2000; Cameron and Kulick 2006; Farqhar 2000). While an explicit focus on language remains marginal to literature on sexualities (Kulick 2000), issue of language use and translation are seldom explicitly addressed in the growing literature on intersectionality. Yet intersectional perspectives ‘reject the separability of analytical and identity categories’ (McCall 2005:1771), and therefore have an implicit stake in the ‘vernacular’ language of the researched, in the ‘scientific’ language of the researcher and in the relationship of continuity between the two. Drawing on literature within gay and lesbian/queer studies and cross-cultural studies, this chapter revisits debates on sexuality, language and intersectionality. I argue for the importance of giving careful consideration to the language we choose to use as researchers to collectively define the people whose experiences we try to capture. I also propose that language itself can be investigated as a productive way to foreground how individual and collective identifications are discursively constructed, and to unpack the diversity of lived experience. I address intersectional complexity as a methodological issue, where methodology is understood not only as the methods and practicalities of doing research, but more broadly as ‘a coherent set of ideas about the philosophy, methods and data that underlie the research process and the production of knowledge’ (McCall 2005:1774). My points are illustrated with examples drawn from my ethnographic study on ‘lesbian’ identity in urban Russia, interspersed with insights from existing literature. In particular, I aim to show that an explicit focus on language can be a productive way to explore the intersections between the global, the national and the local in cross-cultural research on sexuality, while also addressing issues of positionality and accountability to the communities researched

The politics of age and generation at the GAZE International LGBT Film Festival in Dublin

Despite their global proliferation, queer film festivals, like film festivals more broadly, are somewhat understudied within the social sciences. This is despite scholarship within film studies that argues that they are significant sites of queer collectivity and sociality. This article examines queer film festivals as sites for the production of community and queer bonds. The authors argue that questions of age, temporality and intergenerationality are central to discourses of community mobilized by festival organizers. The article draws on empirical material from a qualitative study of the GAZE International LGBT Festival in Dublin – which formed part of a larger comparative study of the cultural activist politics of queer film festivals in Europe. Ken Plummer has argued for a greater appreciation of the role of time and generation within sexuality studies. Age, temporality and intergenerationality emerged as important issues within interviews conducted with organizers and volunteers at the festival. The analysis of these issues focuses on three key themes: (1) GAZE as a site of intergenerational community; (2) GAZE as a site of remembrance; and (3) demography and the sustainability of the festival. The article argues that the festival provides a distinctive site of intergenerational queer bonds; and that despite the creation of transnational spaces and discourses, references to the nation and national identity remain central to bonding experiences at the festival

Diasporic Encounters, Sacred Journeys: Ritual, Normativity and the Religious Imagination Among International Asian Migrant Women

This issue highlights recent ethnographic work that discloses migrant women’s creative engagements with the people and landscapes in the places they migrate to. We challenge a dominant view that construes women international migrants from Asia as docile bodies shaped and constrained by their transnational (re)productive labours. And we reject simplistic contemporary formulations of transnational migration that posit a singular, homogeneous ‘transnational social field’. Three key processes, relatively ignored and under theorised are interrogated: diaspora formation, ritual performance and changing normativities. A focus on diaspora encourages us to move beyond a political and economic analysis to consider cultural practices, continuities and discontinuities in migrants’ relationships with the people and places they travel to, as well as those left behind. A focus on ritual emphasises the significance of religious performance in the making of place and convivial sociality. A focus on normativity foregrounds the ways that people’s affective relationships are performatively reworked and transgressed within and across discrepant diasporic spaces

Mediated Diasporas: Material Translations of the Philippines in a Globalized World

Recent work demonstrates the ways that new media and ICTs both in the Philippines and among Filipino diasporans have become central to contemporary processes of identity formation, altering and enabling the articulation of alternative selves and expanding spatially Filipino national identifications and definitions of ‘home’ (Pertierra 2002, 2006, 2010 Tyner and Kuhlke 2000, Ignacio 2005). While attending to media in the specific sense of particular social technologies of mass communication, we extend that work here drawing together new empirical studies both to demonstrate the various ways that a wide range of differently situated migrants make use of those media and by considering processes of mediation in a much broader sense (Mazzarella 2004), an approach that draws together both an analysis of the ‘materialities of migration’ (Basu and Coleman 2008) and ‘the technics of translation’ (Rafael 2005)

Making Different Differences: Representation and Rights in Sexuality Activism

This paper argues that current iterations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) rights are limited by an overreliance on particular representations of sexuality, in which homosexuality is defined negatively through a binary of homosexual/heterosexual. The limits of these representations are explored in order to unpick the possibility of engaging in a form of sexuality politics that is grounded in difference rather than in sameness or opposition. The paper seeks to respond to Braidotti’s call for an “affirmative politics” that is open to forms of creative, future-oriented action and that might serve to answer some of the more common criticisms of current LGBTI rights activism