Feeling/filling closet smoking spaces: negotiating public–private spheres, traversing emotional terrains

ABSTRACT

Aligned with geography's efforts to recover subaltern spaces, this paper investigates the phenomenon of smoking in Singapore through the concept of the queer closet. In so doing, I argue that the closet offers a refreshing analytical framework for thinking about the spatial politics of smoking beyond the dichotomies of public and public spheres, visibility and invisibility, concealment and disclosure, among others. By employing a qualitative methodology, I examine how embodied senses of fragmented selves may vary across space as young people selectively “out” themselves as smokers. Relatedly, I demonstrate that they are to varying degrees, in and out of the closet. Additionally, I contend that they are creative agents who are capable of working around the spatio-social constraints that have been imposed by the Smoking (Prohibition in Certain Places) Act.

KEYWORDS:

• Closet spaces
• queer theory
• smoking

Acknowledgement

The author is immensely grateful to A/P Shirlena Huang for her unwavering support and encouragement all these years.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.