Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: deconstructing queer space

Abstract

Scholarship on queer geographies has called attention to the active production of space as heterosexualized and has levelled powerful critiques at the implicit heterosexual bias of much geographical theorizing. As a result, critical geographers have begun to remark upon the resistance of gays, lesbians and other sexual subjects to a dominant heterosexuality. But such a liberal framework of oppression and resistance is precisely the sort of mapping that poststructuralist queer theory emerged to write against. So, rather than charting the progress of queer geographies, this article offers a critical reading of the deployment of the notion of `queer space' in geography and highlights an alternative queer approach that is inseparable from feminist, materialist, postcolonial and critical race theories.

Parties, Advocacy and Activism: Interrogating Community and Class in Digital Queer India

“…The idea was to influence the mainstream urban space with queer presence instead of creating separate queer spaces. Oswin (2008) identifies queer space as occupied either by self-identified queer people or those who are defying and contesting power and heteronormativity. These spaces are highly segmented and are under constant threat of accessibility.…”

Apropiación de espacios: encuentros sexuales en la Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, Costa Rica, enero-junio, 2016

“…El estudio de la sexualidad y el espacio en las ciencias geográficas se inició entre la década de 1970 y 1980 con los proyectos de investigación de mapeo gay en América del Norte y los territorios comerciales de tipo lésbico a escala urbana (Binnie y Valentine, 1999). Entre los nuevos enfoques de investigación están las prácticas sexuales, relacionando el sexo con el territorio y la producción de espacios identitarios (Guerra, 1999& Oswin, 2008. La creación de subjetividades, categorías identitarias y estilos relacionados a la homosexualidad, en un contexto de segmentación de mercado, es otro de los temas que se proponen como objeto de estudio en la actualidad (Lins, 2013).…”

Navigating the field : an examination of rhetorical spaces in the Journal of sex research.

“…heterosexualities (see Natalie Oswin [2008] and Philip Hubbard [2000] for a discussion of moral heterosexualities). In the context of the research presented in this chapter, imaginative space provides a context for maintaining hetero-morality.…”

“…(see Cooper, 2002;Curran, 2005;Fox, 2007;Gameson and Moon, 2004;Green, Follert, Osterlund, and Paquin, 2008;Harrison, 2010;Hubbard, Matthews, Scoular, 2008;Jacobs, 2004;Knopp, 2007;Johnson and Longhurst, 2010;Jeysaingham, 2010;McLean, 2008;Oswin, 2008;Waitt, Markwell, Gorman-Murray, 2008;Seidman, 2009). Most of the research on space and sexuality has focused on how concrete geographical sites influence the practices and experiences of sexuality.…”

“…Nancy Oswin (2008) has argued that the focus on the heterosexualization of space can create a dichotomy between straight and queer places that masks how sexuality is deployed with respect to race and class. Oswin argues that "queering...analysis thus helps to position sexuality within multifaceted constellations of power" (p. 100).…”