The metaphor of the closet is perhaps one of the strongest narrations of queer life. The Gay Liberation Front famously commanded queers to come "out of the closets and into the streets". But what are the limitations of closet-thinking? Who does it include and exclude in its imaginaries? And what is the geography of the closet? In this episode, I'm joined by Dr. Ale Boussalem from the University of St. Andrews, who shares his research on the racialisations and spatialiations of the closet.
Shownotes:
- Epistemology of the Closet (Eve K. Sedgwick, 1990)
- “A place where there is no need to explain: LGBTQ Muslims, collective disidentification and queer space in Brussels, Belgium”, in Social & Cultural Geography (Ale Boussalem, 2023)
- “In, out, or somewhere else entirely: going beyond binary constructions of the closet in the lives of LGBTQ people from a Muslim background living in Brussels”, in Transactions IBG (Boussalem, 2021)
- “When the spotlight is always on the neighborhood: LGBTQ people from a Muslim background deconstructing imagined borders in Brussels, Belgium” in Sexualities (Boussalem, 2023)
Podcast e-mail: spaceandsexuality@proton.me
Podcast visuals by Chan Arun-Pina (theworkroomofchan)
Podcast intro and outro based on 'Peridot' - Gunnar Olsen [CC]
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39 mins