Epilogue: Crossed Eyes: Toward a Queer-Sighted Vision

The book closes by juxtaposing an image from the work of Allan deSouza with that of Akram Zaatari. Queer visual aesthetic practices memorialize queer modes of desire, affiliation, and embodiment that are deemed without value by conventional methods of retrieving the past. The aesthetic practices of queer diaspora also conjure forth a queer regional imaginary, one that situates the region as the locus of alternative logics of gender and sexuality that challenge the primacy of metronormative sexual and gender formations. These aesthetic practices produce a queer optic that enables us to grasp the unanticipated intimacies between bodies, temporalities, and geographies that are the product of overlapping histories of racialization, diasporic dislocation, settler colonialism, and militarism. Just as crucially, these practices envision resilient strategies of dwelling and creating vibrant lifeworlds off metronormative gay, immigrant, and nationalist grids of progress and development.