In/Visibility and the (post-soviet) ‘queer closet’

Abstract

This article discusses in/visibility regarding sexual identities, the ‘gay closet’, and ‘coming-out’ within the post-soviet context from a queer feminist perspective. Contemporary western-oriented global queer political culture favours individualized visual representation to fight for social acceptance. In many post-soviet and western contexts, however, LGBTIQ+ visibility is increasingly threatened. Accordingly, many choose strategies to sustain their queer lives beyond visibility and public representation. Queer and feminist theory does not offer adequate concepts to account for these forms of resistance. Building on Édouard Glissant, the decolonial and anti-imperialist philosopher, with his demand for the right to opacity, and off queer theory that reconceptualizes the gay closet, such as that of Anna T. I rethink visual in/visibility and the queer closet as space for relationality and recuperation. While Glissant and T. use the concept of opacity primarily on the level of the verbal, I will re-conceptualize opacity as in/visibility on the level of visual discourses. Engaging with the artistic practice of multimedia artist Ruthie Jenrbekova and filmmaker Masha Godovannaya, both of whom play with the in/visibilisation of queerness as artistic strategies, I show how visual opacity can facilitate coalitions beyond identity politics based on nationality, sexuality and/or gender.

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