This article considers the impossibility and possibilities inherent in discussing queerness in films of the South Asian diaspora through the specific lens of Scotland. By using the contexts of "impossibility" in describing the same-sex desire between South Asian women in two different national contexts, this article argues that while same-sex desire becomes "possible" in the Scottish context of Parmar's film (conforming to a type of "coming out" story), Mehta's film cannot posit any open or stable lesbian subject. In light of this, even though Parmar's film may be the more optimistic realization of South Asian lesbian identity, its queer potential is shut down by the parameters of a Western coming out story.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 2. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 27 October 2015.
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#14,172,739
of 22,715,151 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Lesbian Studies
#273
of 407 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#109,708
of 194,642 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Lesbian Studies
#5
of 10 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,715,151 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 35th percentile – i.e., 35% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 407 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 7.8. This one is in the 29th percentile – i.e., 29% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
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