While cross-cultural queer relationality movements and moments may differ from individual experiences, they are united by the counter-hegemonic possibilities that exploring queer relations provides. Yep et al 22

A second group of scholars, represented here by Godfried Asante, Shadee Abdi, Lore LeMaster and Satoshi Toyosaki, and Aaron Sachs, explore the inhabited dimensions of queer relationalities. These essays highlight the experience of queer relationality. While dramatically different in certain ways, these essays generally center around detailed descriptions of moments of queer relationality; how they are subjectively embodied, navigated, and understood; and how they relate to and challenge normativities, systems of power, and hegemonic frameworks of sensemaking. Engaging with these essays altogether demonstrates the diversity, complexity, and profoundness of queer relationalities. These articles demonstrate the contextuality and cultural specificity of queer relationalities, but they also describe certain commonalities that exist in relation to the cross-cultural navigation of queer relationalities. They demonstrate that queer relationalities take multiple forms, but also have a certain identifiable coherence—even as they are being described and engaged with in diverse ways. In the first essay in this section, “Unexpected Intimacies: Exploring Sasso Relationality in Postcolonial Ghana,” Godfried Asante explores queer rela- tionalities in a Ghanaian cultural context and advances the concept of Sasso relationality. Asante’s essay richly explores the nuanced relationships between the embodiment and navigation of queer relationalities and culture, power, language, history, colonialism, and globalization. After defining Sasso rela- tionality, Asante presents two narratives that illustrate the concept and posi- tion it as being an example of queer relationality that resembles but does not rely on normative Western sensemaking frameworks of intelligibility. Indeed, Asante argues, Sasso relationality does not merely exist outside of these normative frameworks. It challenges them. In the second essay, “Worldmaking with Aberoo: Queer Familial Relationality with/for Iranian Americans,” Shadee Abdi evokes the Iranian concept of aberoo to challenge normative colonial Western cultural logics— namely logics surrounding the family, the closet, and binary thinking. Abdi describes aberoo as a culturally specific form of face-saving that allows queer Iranian Americans to save face in relation to normative cultural values and familial structures while also maintaining their queer identities. Abdi presents 10 narratives from participants who identify as queer Iranians in the diaspora or queer Iranian Americans, ultimately arguing that aberoo constitutes a culturally specific form of queer relationality that challenges a variety of Western norms, which include but are not limited to norms surrounding sexuality. In Lore LeMaster and Satoshi Toyosaki’s essay, “Ally as an Emerging Critical Orientation: Performing Praxis-Oriented Ally Subjectivity,” the authors explore and challenge power dynamics in relation to the concepts of ally and allyship. LeMaster and Toyosaki describe the problematic definition and manifestation of allyship in and beyond the neoliberal academy in relation to whiteness, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity. They explore and chal- lenge this through a description of their relationship to themselves, each other, and the academy. Ultimately, LeMaster and Toyosaki intervene in the concept of allyship. They center race, gender, power, and subjectivity in their essay, eventually advancing a vision of allyship that is more firmly rooted in queer relationality and praxis rather than in identity. Finally, in the essay, “Family Pictures: The Queer Relationalities of Multigenerational Queer Family,” Aaron Sachs advances the concept of (queer)spawn relationality. Through a detailed exploration of the queer struc- ture and dynamics of his family, including the fact that he was born to lesbian parents using sperm from a sperm donor and that his daughter was also born to lesbian parents using his sperm, Sachs defines the figure of the (queer) spawn and argues that the (queer)spawn itself reinforces and challenges norms in relation to family, history, and biology. Additionally, Sachs notes that the (queer)spawn encapsulates, exemplifies, and adds to the conceptual tapestry of queer relationality. These essays have many commonalities. For example, they all highlight the fact that queer relationalities are multiple, profound, elusive, ephemeral, and are often unintelligible from hegemonic cultural vantage points. In addition to making specific moments of queer relationality intelligible, these essays make these moments come alive. They provide a nuanced vision of power and how queer relationalities exist in relation to it. These authors present queer rela- tionalities through a postmodern lens, illustrating that queer relationalities are subjective and that their navigation and interpretation depends substantially upon culture, context, power, and standpoint. Additionally, these authors present a dialectical vision of queer relationalities, often arguing overtly that queer relationalities have the capacity to simultaneously reflect, reproduce, and challenge normativities. While that is true, these essays all demonstrate the transformative potential of queer relationalities and their productive role in queer worldmaking. While these essays share many commonalities, they also have some crucial divergences. The divergences, however, profoundly illustrate the breadth of what queer relationalities can be, what they can do, how they relate to power, and how people interpret their significance. Each of these essays focus on queer relationalities at the micro, meso, and macro levels, but some of the essays in this section approach queer relationalities more explicitly in relation to transnational phenomena such as globalization, colonialism, and the trans- national movement of people and ideologies. Other articles focus more cen- trally on exploring queer relationalities in the context of culturally specific constructions such as family, academia, friendship, history, and time. While these essays might not adopt the same primary level of focus, each essay offers an intersectional and comprehensive exploration of how queer relationalities at the inhabited micro level relate to larger institutional, cultural, or global levels. Finally, each essay clearly describes the counterhegemonic potential of queer relationalities and their capacity to challenge and destabilize normativities.