What question did this study set out to answer?

The study aims to explore how writing can create and express Arab queerness through personal and communal encounters.

January 20, 2026Open Access

Nearby, Self-Critical, Ambivalent: Modes of Writing Arab Queerness

Key Points

The study aims to explore how writing can create and express Arab queerness through personal and communal encounters.
Analyzes self-critical writing practices among Arab/Swana queer immigrants.
Interprets theoretical frameworks from established scholars in queer studies and cultural studies.
Explores ambivalence as a critical site for creative writing.
Identifies how encounters shape self-perception and expression in writing.
Demonstrates the role of ambivalence in understanding complex identities.
Suggests that writing can be an openness to multiple narratives and experiences.

Abstract

This paper foregrounds what I term writing through encounters rooted in the premise of writing as a mode of creation. Encounters are understood as affective intensity generating a change in movement (Ahmed, 2000; Probyn, 2016). Through encounters with the self as well as with Arab/Swana queer immigrants, I articulate self-critical writing practices (Anzaldúa, 1987; Nelson, 2015; Mikkilä, 2024), and writing nearby (Minh-Ha, 1994) as creative and critical writing practices to weave an Arab queerness in a non-linear and fragmentary fashion. By attending to ambivalence as a site of critical inquiry and creative response, it invites a mode of writing that is open, multiple, unfinished, and always in encounters with the entangled worlds it inhabits. In this sense, writing through encounters offers novel ways for marginalized voices to reframe their understanding of intersectional identities oscillating between visibility and opacity, migratory experiences, and agencies within the academic landscape.

Nearby, Self-Critical, Ambivalent: Modes of Writing Arab Queerness

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