ABSTRACT

Queer, for all that it promises it can possibly be, may often seem like it simply is one thing or another: absent or present; melancholy or prideful; ordinary or remarkable; nobly futural or hedonistically self-annihilating.1 I suppose that is no surprise: if queer is boundlessness it will fi nd its way to extremes, even if just to lodge itself, to take some time to breathe. Or, to tell the world – and reassure itself – that it is still here. The literature that tells of queerness in India is already nearly legion, its stories replete with triumph and presence and voice but also, more recently as I have argued, with a tentative embrace of the loss, disappointment and incompleteness that lie at the heart of all liberatory projects (Dave 2011a).2