Queer Cultural Palimpsest

How Chicago's Kink Scene Responded to Unsettled Times of Contagion

Bibliographic Data

ID2144128
AuthorsJorge Ochoa (0000-0001-6228-5927, Northwestern University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume66
Issue4
Pages1-22
Publication date2025-10-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociological Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0253 • E-ISSN: 1533-8525
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00380253.2025.2486278
OpenAlexW4409360881
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited60

In this article, I conceptualize Chicago’s kink scene as a cultural palimpsest: an arena that facilitates creative expression repeatedly across time, retains imprints of its foregoing forms, and accumulates layers of history in the process. On the basis of ethnographic research, I then argue that Chicago kinksters harnessed the creative, retentive, and historically layered—or, in a word, palimpsestic—features of their scene to respond to the unsettled times of COVID-19 and mpox. Channeling subcultural creativity, kinksters crafted new forms of collectivity online when in-person nightlife halted in times of social distancing. Marshalling the scene’s retentive capacity, kinksters worked to prevent long-standing subcultural venues from permanent closure amid pandemic-era economic disruptions and to archive and commemorate those that did not survive. And drawing upon earlier histories, kinksters reactivated older strategies of response to HIV/AIDS as they confronted new diseases, including by transforming kink venues into health spaces. Overall, I demonstrate the utility of the cultural palimpsest concept by showing that kinksters mobilized the palimpsestic capacities of their scene to respond to unsettled times of contagion via synergistic strategies of innovation, preservation, and historically informed health action. My approach may prove useful to others who study cultural agency amid change

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Palimpsest · Queer · Queer theory · Sociology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · European history and politics · Gender Studies · History · Social and Cultural Dynamics

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