Journeys and Returns: Home, Life Narratives and Remapping Sexuality in a Regional City

Waitt, Gordon R; Gorman‐Murray, Andrew

doi:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.01006.x

Cited by 34 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…2 2 In that the family home is often associated with suburbia or rural zones and coming out narratives in literature often offer a swift rejection in favour of the liberating anonymity of the metropolis, there exists a further need to reposition affirmative coming out narratives within suburban family homes (Dines, 2009); doing so will ‘critique essentialist categories that posit the migration of non‐normative sexualities as unidirectional flow from small rural towns to large urban centres’ (Waitt and Gorman‐Murray, 2011a, 1380). The scholarly body of work that looks at non‐urban queer narratives seeks to challenge the binary of the ‘rural closet and (metropolitan) gay ghetto’ (Waitt and Gorman‐Murray, 2011b, 1240; see also: Fellows, 1996; Howard, 1999; Phillips et al ., 2000; Knopp and Brown, 2003; Halberstam, 2005; Gorman‐Murray, 2007; Gray, 2009). …”

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confidence: 99%

LGBT Homemaking in London, UK: The Embodiment of Mobile Homemaking Imaginaries

Pilkey

2012

Geographical Research

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A stimulating body of work, which sits at the intersection of feminist and queer geographies, argues that embodied performativity can not be separated from the study of home. This paper seeks to expand on this work by looking closely at spatial mobility and homemaking imaginaries of lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) Londoners. Specifically, I focus on two separate yet related locations in the production of home: the parental home and the home established in adulthood. The paper argues that for LGBT Londoners, both sites play an important, complex role whereby homemaking identity is shaped through the tension or push and pull of these two locations. The parental home can be an isolated space where one's sexual identity remains, if not closeted, then modified. Often, one flees the home in the process of 'coming out', and identity is expressed differently in the new home. Given this departure, arrival, and return (to visit), how does the parental home relate to one's current identity and homemaking practices? The research for the paper is drawn from eight semi-structured interviews conducted with Londoners. Using this research and the physical and emotional embodiment framework, I also draw parallels with Blunt's theme of 'productive nostalgia', whereby both the physical spatial embodiment as well as the narrative of imagination -in past (as in conventional understandings of nostalgia), present, and future -act as a lens to understanding the homemaking of LGBT Londoners.

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confidence: 99%

LGBT Homemaking in London, UK: The Embodiment of Mobile Homemaking Imaginaries

Pilkey

2012

Geographical Research

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“…This article builds upon the work of scholars such as Oswin, Olund and others (Valentine and Skelton, ; Doderer, ; Waitt and Gorman‐Murray, ) in taking the insights of queer theory and queer geographies regarding sexuality as a discourse of power to LGBTQ‐friendly audiences in subfields not formally organized around questions of sexuality. Even in the limited review offered here, it is clear that scholars have been addressing the imbrications of sexuality and the urban for decades.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Trouble With Flag Wars: Rethinking Sexuality in Critical Urban Theory

Seitz

2015

Int J Urban Regional Res

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Critical urban theory (CUT) provides intellectual support for a politics of the right to the city. However, CUT has rarely engaged with the rich scholarship on sexuality and the urban, much of which directly addresses questions of social justice. CUT has most often treated sexuality as an attribute, rather than a diffuse discourse of subject-producing power intimately connected with race, class and gender. This article highlights two strands in contemporary queer studies--queer subjectless critique and queer temporality--that can enrich understandings of the key concepts of alienation, deprivation and resistance in the city. I illustrate the salience of queer thinking for CUT through a close reading of Flag Wars (2003), a documentary film recognized for its engagement with gentrification and the politics of difference in the United States. While the film ostensibly explores the problem of gay gentrification in a working-class black neighborhood, a queer subjectless approach asks how discourses on sexuality produce residents at risk of displacement as deviant, immoral and queer--regardless of sexual orientation. I argue that recognizing the wide range of ways in which narratives about sexuality can deprive and alienate urban subjects could generate additional alternative bases for solidarity in the struggle for a just city.

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“…There are similar studies o f 'lesbian territories' in the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia, though these are characterized as subterranean or 'less visible' than 'gay villages' (Bouthillette, 1997;Murphy and Watson, 1997;Nash, 2001;Podmore, 2006;Rothenberg, 1995;Valentine, 1995). Beyond the inner city, important research examines lesbian or gay attachments to suburban, rural, or regional places in the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia (Gorman-Murray et al, 2012; Kirkey and Forsyth, 2001;Riordon, 1996;Smith and Holt, 2005;Waitt and Gorman-Murray, 2011).…”

Section: Geographies Of Sexual Minorities Place Making and Mobilitiementioning

confidence: 97%

Mobile Places, Relational Spaces: Conceptualizing Change in Sydney's LGBTQ Neighborhoods

Gorman‐Murray

Nash

2014

Environ Plan D

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Since the 1950s neighborhoods associated with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) subjects and communities have become part of the urban landscape in many cities of the Global North. In Australia this is evident in Sydney, where particular inner-city suburbs are bracketed with 'gay', 'lesbian', and 'queer' sexualities. These sexual-spatial relations are multiple and changing, with current fears about the decline of 'traditional' gay village spaces coinciding with the emergence of alternative LGBTQ neighborhoods. This paper reinterprets these transformations, departing from notions of the 'demise' of gay spaces, (re)conceptualizing Sydney's LGBTQ neighborhoods as mobile and relational moorings that are not fixed and immutable but repeatedly reconstructed and regrounded from flows of people, knowledge, and capital. Moreover, such mobile practices and representations connect places, symbolically and materially constructing them in relation to each other. Consequently, rather than reading through narratives of 'demise' and 'emergence', we suggest Sydney's LGBTQ landscapes are embedded in, and (re)constituted through, a 'politics of mobility'. We examine the physical displacement, representations of mobility, and embodied mobile practices underpinning these changes in inner-city Sydney. In doing so, our purpose is to make conceptual and practical connections between the significance of 'place making' and 'mobility' to LGBTQ lives, communities, and politics. This discussion encourages geographers of sexualities to consider the multiplicity of LGBTQ mobilities, and equally prompts mobilities scholars to be cognizant of sexual and gender politics in processes and outcomes of mobilities.

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Journeys and Returns: Home, Life Narratives and Remapping Sexuality in a Regional City

Cited by 34 publications

References 53 publications

LGBT Homemaking in London, UK: The Embodiment of Mobile Homemaking Imaginaries

LGBT Homemaking in London, UK: The Embodiment of Mobile Homemaking Imaginaries

The Trouble With Flag Wars: Rethinking Sexuality in Critical Urban Theory

Mobile Places, Relational Spaces: Conceptualizing Change in Sydney's LGBTQ Neighborhoods

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