Aparajita and Nishith Chetana: the city’s contested fabric

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines self-making projects and the desire for respectability within queer lives in Kolkata, across distinct class-caste affiliations. We argue the desire for queer respectability take virtual forms, sartorial fashioning, and yet remains a convoluted project mirroring Kolkata’s relationship with neoliberal capitalism. The authors engage with a young lesbian identified activist and a young male fashion designer whose sexual identity remains tacit. Their virtual and real interactions reveal how both the characters conceal their caste and class status through projects of sartorial fashion in order to be read as appropriately queer. The article argues for understanding sexual and gender identities in relation with class, and caste status, as well as ethnic and religious identities, thereby revealing how the liberatory potentials of queer activism is a form of emergent neoliberal governmentality within contemporary India.