When the queen of transvestites revealed it all? Performative politics of queer life writing in Turkey’s era of confession

After the coup d'& eacute;tat of 1980, as a neoliberal regime was gradually established in Turkey, confession gained unprecedented power as a disciplinary technology. Several queer subjects created auto/biographical texts and performances as they negotiated the gendered and sexualised politics of confessional citizenship. & Uuml;mit O & gbreve;uztan's documentary novel Krali & ccedil;e Sisi [Queen Sisi] (1991) was of exceptional significance. O & gbreve;uztan claimed to narrate the high-end trans sex worker Seyhan Soylu's life and her sexual experiences with Turkey's elite. The author employed archival and ethnographic research methods and performative writing techniques to create a truth effect while preventing trouble with the law. By queering iconic figures, Krali & ccedil;e Sisi proposed an alternative perspective on the past and explored the possibility of a different future. This example of liberal pornography queered its readers by providing an opportunity for identification and empathy, and by producing non-normative sexual desires in and through their bodies. The accounts of the book's trans readers show how this notorious text performed a work of activism and changed lives. Rather than an unconditional investment in liberatory politics, however, Krali & ccedil;e Sisi harbours strong ambivalences and discriminatory discourses, revealing the diverse, at times unsettling forms queer literature and memory practices can take.