Lede E Miki Pohshna
Research Scholar, English Department, North-Eastern Hill University, Email- ledeemiki@gmail.com, ORCID- https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0434-9704
Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s17n6
Abstract
While COVID-19 has unleashed waves of reverse-migration from the cities back to the hometowns due to economic and physical uncertainties that accompanied the pandemic, queer people from the North-Eastern Region of India choose to stay in the cities. Defying the reverse-migration trend, they choose the freedom that the city gives them over the prejudice of their hometown toward their sexuality. This paper will theorize how pandemic affects and at the same time affirms queer sexualities This paper will re-interpret metronormativity in the context of North-East queer people and will co-opt Judith Halberstam’s theory while at the same time reworking it to fit the local context of queer North-East. Unlike Halberstam’s theory that the metro offers a continuum of free existence to the queer people, this paper will examine certain queer narratives both online and through interviews in order to understand how the city offers not a “freer” existence ( in the sense that freedom is given and implied upon) but rather a relatively anonymous existence which allows them to live freely in anonymity but never silent. It will problematize the concept of home and space and how queer subjectivities are (un)formed depending upon certain variables that the home offers which eventually affects queer existence. This existence will then juxtapose with Kosofsky’s “gesture of silence” of the home and the closet and in doing so, it will attempt to understand North East queer’s preference for the danger of COVID 19 and the “insecurities” of the city over the “security” of home.
Keywords: Northeastern, Queer, Metronormativity, Reverse-Migration, COVID-19