In a queer new light: eluridating difference beyond clarity

This essay politicizes the aesthetics of illumination, extrapolating from artistic reference to the sarcoma-softening lighting practices of a prominent gay bar during the U.S. AIDS epidemic and recontextualizing it into an era populated by near-compulsorily “PrEPared” Western gay men. Analyzing lighting as a performance of looking reveals that Enlightenment aesthetics perceive difference as only ever an obstacle to coalitionary politics. Revisiting the questions of queer representation and how difference might “come to light” in more compassionate ways, this essay “eluridates” an alternative to the current neoliberal mandate of freedom as experienced only in submission to elucidation, exposure, and transparency.