This hybrid essay-interview draws on the experiences of diasporic, queer, Dalit-OBC filmmaker Moses Tulasi to explore the mutually constitutive roles of sexuality, caste, migration, art, and activism. These moments include an online search for partners on Craigslist, queer nightlife in Chicago and Hyderabad, and the outing of his partner on national television.
Following Moses from his entrance into queer community through to his release from jail, the essay develops erotics as a useful analytic in the study of activism. The accompanying interview with Tulasi centers his own theorizations on these questions. He builds on the above themes, detailing how caste is imbricated in family structures, migration patterns, queer activism, sexual desire, and everyday life.
Throughout, Tulasi draws attention to the sensual and erotic textures of living within caste hierarchy, engaging in protest, and espousing dissent. Together, the essay and interview demonstrate that sedition is not only rhetorical dissent, but the everyday condition of being a minoritarian subject in a Brahminical and heteronormative state. Maybe he would find another Indian man to have sex with. Since the recent end to his arranged marriage, he had the privacy and mobility to freely engage in casual sex with men.
The founder of Trikone-Chicago, a young suburban desi , had a stroke of risky brilliance, and posted the potluck details on Craigslist personals. He, on the other hand, had designs on me, and was disappointed that I left early; he had hoped to pick me up that night. He told me this in a research interview several years later.
We were best friends by then. This essay, based on early conversations and fieldwork with Moses between and , as well as a interview transcript documenting his experiences at the UoH, offers anecdotes and theorizations about how queerness, migration, and caste matter to each other.
