Résumés
Abstract
This article analyzes the fiction of the Russian author Evgenii Kharitonov through the lens of Steve Mann’s (2013) theorization of “sousveillance” and Édouard Glissant’s (2010) conception of the right to opacity. As a gay man and dissident writer, Kharitonov was under observation by the KGB throughout his life, and his stories frequently confront the inherent violence of homophobic surveillance in the Soviet Union. However, this article demonstrates how Kharitonov actively resists Soviet surveillance by drawing attention to the performance of gay invisibility that it enforces and challenging the implicit conceptions of homosexuality that it entails. Through a close reading of several short stories from his collection, Under House Arrest [Pod domashnim arestom] (1998), I argue that Kharitonov’s stories use strategies of sousveillance to explore the opaque spaces where gay communities could exist outside the visibility and conceptual legibility of official surveillance.
Keywords:
- sousveillance,
- aesthetics,
- homosexuality,
- opacity,
- invisibility,
- Soviet Union
Parties annexes
Bibliography
- Alexander, Rustam. 2021. Regulating Homosexuality in Soviet Russia, 1956–91: A Different History. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
- Baer, Brian J. 2013. Now You See It: Gay (In)Visibility and the Performance of Post-Soviet Identity. In Queer Visibility in Post-Socialist Cultures, edited by Nárcisz Fejes and Andrea P. Balogh, 41–65. Bristol, UK: Intellect.
- Blas, Zach. 2016. Opacities: An Introduction. Camera Obscura 31 (2): 149–153.
- Brighenti, Andrea. 2018. Artveillance: At the Crossroads of Art and Surveillance. In Surveillance Studies: A Reader, edited by Torin Monahan and David Murakami Wood. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Browne, Simone. 2015. Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
- Chernetsky, Vitaly. 2007. Mapping Postcommunist Cultures: Russia and Ukraine in the Context of Globalization. Montreal, CA: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
- Chernetsky, Vitaly, and Devin McFadden. 2021. Queer Culture(s). In The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture, edited by Mark Lipovetsky, Maria Engström, Tomáš Glanc, Ilja Kukuj, and Klavdia Smola, 455-476. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Engelstein, Laura. 1995. Soviet Policy toward Male Homosexuality: Its Origins and Historical Roots. Journal of Homosexuality 29 (2): 155–178.
- Glissant, Édouard. 2010. Poetics of Relation. Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
- Guzeva, Alexandra. 2020. “There Is No Sex in the USSR!” – What’s Behind That Mysterious Claim? Russia Beyond, July 7. https://www.rbth.com/history/332399-no-sex-in-ussr-phrase-history [accessed January 13, 2025].
- Healey, Dan. 2002. Homosexual Existence and Existing Socialism: New Light on the Repression of Male Homosexuality in Stalin’s Russia. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 8 (3): 349–378.
- Healey, Dan. 2012. Comrades, Queers, and “Oddballs”: Sodomy, Masculinity, and Gendered Violence in Leningrad Province of the 1950s. Journal of the History of Sexuality 21 (3): 496–522.
- Kafer, Gary, and Daniel Grinberg. 2019. Editorial: Queer Surveillance. Surveillance & Society 17 (5): 592–601.
- Kharitonov, Evgenii. 1996. The Oven. Translated by Kevin Moss. In Out of the Blue: Russia’s Hidden Gay Literature. San Francisco, CA: Gay Sunshine Press.
- Kharitonov, Evgenii. 1998. Under House Arrest. Translated by A. L. Tait. London: Serpant’s Tail.
- Kharitonov, Evgenii. 2005. Slezy na tsvetakh: Kniga pervaia. Moscow, RU: Glagol.
- Mann, Steve. 2013. Veillance and Reciprocal Transparency: Surveillance Versus Sousveillance, AR Glass, Lifeglogging, and Wearable Computing. In 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (Istas): Social Implications of Wearable Computing and Augmediated Reality in Everyday Life, Toronto, CA, June 27–29, 1-12. Toronto, CA: IEEE.
- Mann, Steve, Jason Nolan, and Barry Wellman. 2003. Sousveillance: Inventing and Using Wearable Computing Devices for Data Collection in Surveillance Environments. Surveillance & Society 1 (3): 331–355.
- Moss, Kevin. 2020. Camp Kharitonov and Russian Gay Identity. In Go East! LGBTQ+ Literature in Eastern Europe, 101–111. Ljuljana, SI: Ljuljana University Press.
- T., Anna. 2014. The Opacity of Queer Languages. E-flux 60: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/60/61064/the-opacity-of-queer-languages.
- Wiedlack, Katharina. 2023. In/Visibility and the (Post-Soviet) “Queer Closet.” Journal of Gender Studies 32 (8): 922–936.
- Wolff, Alex. 2022. Queer Sousveillance: Publics, Politics, and Social Media in South Korea. In The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology, edited by Elisabette Costa, Patricia G. Lange, Nell Haynes, and Jolynna Sinanan, 505–516. London: Routledge.