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Paper short abstract

This ethnographic account engages with Berlin's queer Arab collectives through their right to opacity. It explores how urban artistic forms and practices challenge the polarising binaries and imaginaries of Islam and queerness, messing with the face of a city so long accustomed to frowning.

Paper long abstract

Overly grim victors often write history. This ethnographic contribution, however, narrates a queer history of Berlin-based initiatives penned by a commitment to their right to opacity (Glissant 1997). It is a refusal to be restrained by the presumed impossibilities of queer Arab life, particularly against the polarising binaries—and imaginaries—of Islam and queerness as reinforced by racializing state discourses of homonationalism (Puar 2007; 2013), femonationalism (Farris 2017), and securitization (Amar 2011; Dietze 2018).

Grounded in my participation in collectives like Queer Arab Barty and ADIRA, this paper explores their creation of an “otherwise” of cultural production that challenges delusions of a “safe space." Their urban artistic engagements function as grassroots modes of care, forging spaces for collective desire and solidarity under public scrutiny. By embracing opacity, queer Arab artists protect themselves from reductive categories by reworking their practices within coalitional networks of racialized Others, a mode of relating enabled by urban migrancy. This practice remains entangled in the frictions of the neoliberal city, facing political silencing, budget cuts, and right-wing populism.

Centering collectives that rework a fragmented city through opacity, I ask: How can migrant negotiations of queer encounters leverage unruly, imaginative performance like drag to challenge the racialized binaries of gender, religion, and belonging? And how does the collective desire for doing otherwise (Binder 2022; Weiss 2016) mess with the face of a city so long accustomed to frowning?