Anamnesis and queer poe(/li)tics: Dissident sexualities and the erotics of transgression in Cyprus

Abstract

This article examines queer Cyprus issues in terms of national and sexual identity politics, queer historiography and a transgressive aesthetic of desire. It relies on the premise that focusing on the personal experience of desire offers a mode of narrative that may mitigate the displacement of queer experience and subvert systemic oppression. At various moments and most prominently in Part D, the writing attempts a discursive performance whose context, tone and character adjust themselves to the article’s engagement with queer politics of Cyprus. As an ultimate goal, this performance seeks to contribute less to the much-rehearsed debates on sexual identities and more to their attendant politics of power and to the poetics of desire. Along with the pursuit of sexual fulfilment, the poetics of desire become fundamental elements in constructing a sense of personal sexual history. As I examine the legacies of colonial orientalism within the context of queer desire, I explore the possibility of spaces where dissenting sexualities may inscribe a trajectory while in the grip of strictures that determine gender, sexual and national performance. By turning attention to personal spaces, this article delineates a subjective consciousness whose personal imaginings expand into queer embodiments that unfold across and beyond.