ABSTRACT
As mass surveillance systems expand to incorporate the growth of new media technologies, new and innovative countersurveillance, or sousveillance, practices have emerged. In South Korea, young queer and trans activists have developed queer sousveillance strategies that simultaneously validate one’s existence (as queer or trans) while also guarding against the profound social, legal, and economic discrimination aimed at queer and trans people. They post anonymized group photos from activist meetings, for instance, while taking on nicknames to avoid the spread of traceable and identifiable information. These types of queer sousveillance practices, often negotiated through social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, are mediations of anonymity; they are claims to existence and enumeration predicated on survivability and endurance. Through an examination of the ways young queer and trans folk in South Korea are reshaping the boundaries of visibility through social media, this piece theorizes a politics of anonymity that drives queer sousveillance in facilitating and safeguarding emergent forms of queer life and politics.
