Probability and queer expression in Sudhanshu Saria’s post-2013 Loev in India

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 2013 recriminalization of homosexuality in India after the Delhi High Court had read down the anti-sodomy law in 2009. The verdict cannot be simplistically seen as a backward move. To say that it moves the country backwards or that the country is going back in time because of the said step is to fall into the trap of heteronormative prioritization. The recriminalization of homosexuality has to be seen as a violent erasure and disabling of queer narrativization of time in India. This paper presents an analysis of Sudhanshu Saria’s film, Loev (2015) to examine how queer citizen-subjects navigate the politics of invisibilization and hyper-visibilization in post-2013 India. The paper proposes the lens of Probability to examine the queer experience of how ‘now’ is occupied differently by way of structures of ambiguity. Probability can be said to be the space of slippages where heteronormative performances are used to temporarily and repeatedly hoodwink society to make possible a queer ‘now’. The paper explores the concept of Probability in relation to temporality and visibility.