Possible Impossibles Between Area and Queer

This essay revisits "Area Impossible: The Geopolitics of Queer Studies" (2016), a special issue coedited by Anjali Arondekar and Geeta Patel. It considers both the overall aims of the issue, including that of reading the politics of queer and area studies as "coincident," and the signal contributions of articles from the issue (e.g., on the question of temporality). The essay examines how the articles both engage with and disavow "queer" and "area" while giving critical and locational specificity to both terms.