Shimmers in the Dark: On the Possibilities of Intimate Touch in Bombay’s Queer Sexpublics

Abstract:In Bombay’s cruising parks, gay parties, pride events, and virtual spaces—what I call queer sexpublics—queer sex, touch, and intimacy flourish. Though queer and trans people perpetually negotiate risk and rejection in search of love, sex and intimacy, queer sexpublics enable practices that allow them to both endure as well as play with state and social violences. Drawing on 28 months of fieldwork conducted in Bombay between 2013 and 2019, this talk asks: How might queer and trans lives be lived outside of and against the reaches of cultural intelligibility and legal and social recognition? And how might queer studies and anthropology engage this abundance of life in the face of violence, risk, and erasure—“More Life” (Chambers-Letson 2018)—as a means of recognizing minoritarian lives not just in the moments when they are in crisis, but also when they brim with unbridled possibilities? I develop the concept of the shimmer—fleeting, coded moments of queer touch and intimacy–to examine unruly, temporary, and critical forms of life that are simultaneously ephemeral (here and then gone) as well as speculative (strategic calculations of risks for rewards). Shimmers name how people eke out forms of possibility, pleasure, and intimacy amid precarious and risky existences.

Dr. Brian A. Horton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Brandeis University. At Brandeis, he is also an affiliated faculty member in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, African and African American Studies, and the South Asian Studies Program, which he currently chairs. Brian is a sociocultural anthropologist working across queer anthropology, South Asian Studies, and “otherwise anthropology”—or an anthropology of the political, social, ethical, and aesthetic possibilities that emerge from ongoing structural violence, precarity, and crisis. Across each of these broad domains, his research and teaching center the thresholds between pleasure and violence; wherein he asks how gender, sexual, and racial minorities experience and endure myriad forms of violence while simultaneously enacting new possibilities and futures. Currently, he is working on his first book-length monograph, Shimmers of the Fabulous: Public Sex and Intimate Touch in Queer and Trans Bombay. His work has appeared in Sexualities, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, and QED: Journal of GLBTQ Worldmaking.

Co-sponsored by South Asia Program and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. thank you.

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HYBRID EVENT | Twenty years after 9/11, America has finally ended its longest war. But the precipitous fall of Kabul serves as a poignant reminder that the threats to American national security remain acute and are ever-evolving. This congressional policy forum will reflect on the tumultuous past two decades and offer insight into the future of American foreign policy.

Speakers

Rep. Jim Himes, Chair of the National Security, International Development and Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee and Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Former Rep. Chris Shays, Former senior member of the Budget, Financial Services, Homeland Security, and Government Reform committees

Moderators

Steve Israel, Director, Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University and former U.S. Representative (D-NY)
Sarah Kreps, the John L. Wetherill Professor in the Department of Government, Adjunct Professor of Law, and the Director of the Cornell Tech Policy Lab at Cornell University. Active duty officer, United States Air Force (1999-2003).

Hybrid event

The in-person option will be held at the Cornell Club in NYC. The virtual option will be made available via livestream.

Let us know how you plan to attend. Registration required.