Introduction: LGBTQ+ visibilities in the Caucasus and Central Asia

ABSTRACT

The idea for this collection of papers emerged from a desire to showcase queer scholarship in and on the region, following a panel discussion about the visibility of queer communities in the post-Soviet space at the ASEEES virtual convention in December 2021. The panellists’ discussions highlighted the ongoing challenges of queer knowledge production and the tendency for scholarship produced by and on queer people in the region to be regarded as either ‘anomalous’ and/or ‘exotic’ and therefore treated as marginal. The contributions here challenge the latter argument by demonstrating that there are lessons to be learned from the experiences of queer people in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this introduction, the guest editors explore the dominant themes that emerged from the articles in this issue. They also reflect on the politics of representation, reflexivity and research, and how they have sought to engage with them in editing this issue.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ+ visibility
• LGBTQ+ activism; knowledge production; reflexivity; positionality; research methods
• Central Asia
• Caucasus

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the authors who contributed to this issue for their patience and for sharing their experiences, work and knowledge with us. The publication process was a bumpy road, but we made it! Cai would also like to thank Jasmin for her leadership and firm steering throughout the process of developing and finalizing the issue, without which the project would not have made it to its destination.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In contrast to our use of LGBTQ+ to describe particular identities and communities that relate to specific configurations of sexuality and/or gender, we use ‘queer’ here to denote a wide range of sexualities, gender identities and expressions, all of which do not conform to cisheteropatriarchal norms of gender and/or sexuality. As such, our use of ‘queer’ does not describe a specific identity or experience per se.