Between Queer Joy and Injury: The Making and Unmaking of a Queer Sanctuary, Nanur Basha, in Bangladesh

This article expands the notion of queer domesticity from the vantage point of the global South. Drawing on autoethnography, ephemeral archives, and secondary sources, the authors examine Nanur Basha, the residence of a Bangladeshi queer activist and community mentor, which in 2016 was the site of two murders committed by a local chapter of Al‐Qaeda. By empirically interrogating the events leading up to the unmaking of Nanur Basha, the authors argue that global South queer domesticities — constituted by quotidian practices of queer worlding and expanding from apartments to rooftops to streets to political discourses — aspire to greater political freedom by deploying imaginative and counterhegemonic practices. As queer domesticities open up interstitial sanctuaries in nationalist discourses and within the urban fabric, they are also unmade by competing postcolonial nationalisms. Contesting Nanur Basha's reduction to a site of victimhood under Islamic terrorism and homophobia, this article illustrates how Nanur Basha indexes a subterranean modality of southern queer domesticity that negotiates secrecy, safety, celebration, and survival under heterosexist nationalist surveillance and violence. Such queer domesticities underpin an affective sanctuary at the borderlands between queer joy and injury. The article contributes to emerging conversations in transnational queer studies by situating queer worldmaking practices within landscapes of authoritarianism and queerphobia.