ABSTRACT
Central Asia is often described as a pretty queer region, yet is usually imagined as populated by exclusively heterosexual and gender-conforming people. This chapter explores not only the possibility of decolonising queer activism, queer studies and queer theory for the sake of its productive application in Central Asia, but also attempts to consider the utility of queering Central Asian studies intself. This is attemplted in reference to the collection of feminist and queer science fiction short stories Utterly Other (Sovsem Drugie), which was published in Bishkek in 2018 by STAB-Press. Working on the intersection of activism, art and academia, the authors of the stories imagine a new world by both decolonizing queerness – and queering Central Asia.
