On purpose: solidarity by accident or design and the generative ambiguity in between

This text is about queer (deviant and defiant) modes and methodologies of community and communal projects. I mobilize the multiplicity (and multiple potentialities) of how different members envision and invest in concepts of solidarity, community and belonging. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork within a support group that mobilized for the rights and wellbeing of queer exiles in Helsinki/Finland, I narrate and analyze how members’ proximity in an atmosphere of skepticism and ambiguity animates imaginations and analyses. A breakdown in communication challenges our sense of sovereignty over meaning or purpose but mobilizes nonsovereignty as a politically responsive and responsible engagement with uncertainty.