Shifting Positionalities: Empirical Reflections on a Queer/Trans of Colour Methodology

How can we study ‘Queer’, or indeed, should we? Drawing on fieldwork with peopleraised in interracial families in Britain and Germany, and reflecting on my owncoming out as transgendered/genderqueer during the research, I reflect on therole of difference, similarity, and change in the production of queerknowledges. My entry point is a queer diasporic one. Queers of colour, I argue,have a particular stake in queering racialised heterosexualities; yetdifferences within diasporic spaces clearly matter. While ‘Queer’ can open up analternative methodology of redefining and reframing social differences, thedirectionality of our queering - ‘up’ rather than ‘down’ - is clearly relevant.I suggest the anti-racist feminist principle of positionality as fruitful forsuch a queer methodology of change. This is explored with regard to a selectionof empirical and cultural texts, including the debate around Paris is Burning,Jenny Livingston's film about the Harlem house/ball scene; the appeal that anon-white heterosexual artist such as South-Asian pop singer MIA can have forqueers of colour; the camp role model which Thai sex work femininity canrepresent for queer and trans people from the second generation of Thaimigration; and the solidarity of a Southeast Asian butch with feminine women inher diasporic collectivity.