Immigrant closets: tactical-micro-practices-in-the-hyphen.

Abstract

The theoretical and material moves within this essay suggest that culturally hybrid agents use the "closet" as a space to negotiate the intersections of sexuality and ethnicity in everyday life. Discussing some conclusions of my ethnographic research project with the Russian Gay and Lesbian Group of West Hollywood, this essay applies Michel de Certeau's notion of tactics to the daily micro-practices of queer identified immigrants as they move between the demands of overlapping and contradictory cultures. Examining the circumstances in the Russian-American-immigrant-imagined community shared by the informants in this site, I argue that, contrary to a popularized valorization of queer "outness," there is a great deal of power in the oscillation between visibility and invisibility.