The fear of going home: revisiting the nexus between (homo) sexualities and relocations through the concept of sexile

Abstract

In this article, we propose a critical reading of the notion of sexile, which emerged in the United States, in the 1990s, in reference to the experience of exile as lived by Puerto Rican homosexuals who left their country of origin due to their sexual orientation. Since then, the connotations of sexile have multiplied and increasingly begun to address the problem of belonging that arises for homosexual subjects in processes of relocation. Throughout the article, we trace this trajectory back to the experience of multiple denials of belonging that is also described as the fear of going home. Weaving a dialogue with Gloria Anzaldúa and Didier Eribon, we argue that the sexile may be a concept that elucidates on the experience of feeling strange in one’s own origins. In the last part, we also deal with the notion of “queer diaspora”, confrontingit with that of sexile and pointing to its contributions and limits.

Keywords: homosexuality; migration; sexile; belonging; queer diaspora