Progress in Human Geography 32(1) (2008) pp.

89103

Critical geographies and the uses of

sexuality: deconstructing queer space
Natalie Oswin*
Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, 1 Arts Link,
Singapore 117570, Singapore
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.
Key words: critical geography, gender, heteronormativity, homonormativity, queer theory, race,
sexuality and space.

As long as queer studies is presumed to be

solely a question of identity, as long as it
remains within the framework of identity, it
will always be a collaborative enterprise with
power. (Jose Quiroga, 2003: 134)

I Queer geographies
Geographical engagements with queer theory
have put the lives of non-heterosexuals on
the disciplinary map. This is a somewhat
paradoxical development since the main
contribution that queer theory has made
to sexuality studies has been a critique of
sexual identity politics. As a poststructuralist
approach, queer theory challenges the idea
of the preconstituted sexual subject and

understands power as productive rather

than simply oppressive. In other words, it
challenges sexuality studies to move beyond
humanist understandings of essential sexual
identities that animate a politics of liberation
for those who are presumably excluded from
heterosexual hegemony. Yet, critical geographers generally depict queer spaces as
spaces of gays and lesbians or queers existing
in opposition to and as transgressions of
heterosexual space. This article critiques this
dominant disciplinary notion of queer space
by exploring recent works within and beyond
geography that offer new directions for queer
geographies. The scholarship examined here

*Email: geoon@nus.edu.sg
2008 SAGE Publications

DOI: 10.1177/0309132507085213

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attends to the instability of sexual subjectivity and complicates abstract calculations of

heterosexual dominance and homosexual
resistance by conducting embodied analyses
of queer cultural politics. As such, it accounts
for fractures within queer cultural politics
and merges postcolonial and critical race
theory with queer theory to bring questions
of race, colonialism, geopolitics, migration,
globalization and nationalism to the fore in
an area of study previously trained too narrowly on sexuality and gender. Some queer
geographers have pushed these insights so
far that they, in fact, challenge the analytical
usefulness of the notion of queer space and
instead utilize queer theory to understand
the ways in which sexuality is used as part
of broad constellations of power across
the heterosexual/homosexual divide. This
deconstructive move has the potential to
re-orientate queer studies within geography
by highlighting the ways in which a queer
approach can be deployed to understand
much more than the lives of queers. This
article is written to contribute to the advancement of a critical geography that goes
beyond a sexual politics of recognition and
a queer geography that engages deeply
with feminist, postcolonial and critical race
theories.
II Making room for sexual deviants
The geographical sexuality and space literature has put the topics of homosexuality and
heterosexuality on the disciplinary map. Both
will be dealt with in turn. This artificial divide
is invoked merely to facilitate a reading of its
maintenance in the literature with which I am
concerned. As will become evident, the aim
of this article is to build on work that seeks
to complicate the heterosexual/homosexual
binary (and other binaries that work with it
in tandem) while arguing for a non-identarian
queer approach. But first, an excavation of
the notion of queer space is in order.
Geographical studies of the spatial expressions and experiences of sexual others

in particular, those of gays and lesbians

began to surface in the late 1970s. In the
mid-1990s, David Bell, Jon Binnie and Gill
Valentine played a leading role in revamping such enquiries.1 They took note of the
profound effect that the emergence of queer
theory had on the interdisciplinary field of
sexuality studies as a result of its devastating
challenge to the idea that categories such as
gay and lesbian have a basis in essential,
natural attributes of human beings. Taking
up this insight, they argued that just as individual persons do not have pre-existing
sexual identities, neither do spaces. In other
words, space is not naturally authentically
straight but rather actively produced and
(hetero)sexualized (Binnie, 1997a: 223).
They further posit queer space as a gay and
lesbian (and less frequently bisexual, transsexual and transgendered2) space that offers
a radical alternative to heterosexual space.
For instance, Bell and Valentine state, the
presence of queer bodies in particular locations forces people to realize (by juxtaposition
of queer and street or queer and city)
that the space around them, the city
streets, the malls and the motels, have
been produced as (ambiently) heterosexual,
heterosexist and heteronormative (1995b:
18).3 Valentine elsewhere notes, colonizing
and occupying space has proved an important
queer tactic (2003: 417). Similarly, Binnie
emphasizes the creation of sexual dissident
visibility and space in oppressive locations
and circumstances (1997a: 230).
In the work of Bell, Binnie, Valentine,
and others queer space is thus established
as a concrete space that is carved out by
sexual dissidents (read: gays and lesbians).4
As a reterritorialization of heterosexual
space, it purportedly enables the visibility of
sexual subcultures that resist and rupture
the hegemonic heterosexuality that is the
source of their marginality and exclusion.
This conceptualization of queer space is
significant not least because it has caught on.
It has been rehearsed in prominent reviews

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Natalie Oswin: Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality 91

of work on sexuality and gender in Progress in
Human Geography (Domosh, 1999; Hubbard,
2000) as well as in recent readers such as A
companion to feminist geography (Bondi and
Davidson, 2004), A companion to cultural geography (Phillips, 2004) and A companion to
political geography (Valentine, 2003). While
the issues of sexual minorities were once
unmistakably neglected areas of disciplinary
enquiry, it is now rather unremarkable for
critical geographers to remark upon the
resistance of gays, lesbians and other sexual
deviants to a dominant heterosexuality.
This is no small feat. But while this particular
construction of queer space has become
dominant, it is far from uncontested.
When it is put forward as an abstract
calculation of heterosexual domination
and homosexual resistance, the concept
of queer space is open to serious critique.
For such a liberal framework is precisely
the sort of mapping that poststructuralist
queer theory emerged to write against.
Recent work challenges conceptualizations
of queer space as dissident space, resistant
space, progressive space, colonized space
or claimed space. It challenges equations of
queer space with gay and lesbian (and much
less frequently bisexual, transsexual and
transgendered) space and the maintenance
of a heterosexual/homosexual binary upon
which such problematic notions of queer
space rely. And it challenges the privileging of
sexuality above all other processes of identity
formation by considering queer subjects as
simultaneously raced, classed and gendered
bodies. It must be stated that this neat
description lends the literature considerably
more coherence than it possesses. My aim
here is to trace the threads of these arguments
through the work of various interlocutors,
highlighting their productive tensions and
levelling further critique in service of a reconceptualization of queer space one
that insists that we go beyond it. I first set
out alternative queer geographical theorizations and then explore work both within
and beyond the discipline that leads to an

argument against the analytical usefulness

of the notion of queer space while suggesting
the possibility of a queer approach to space
in its stead.
III Embodying queer space
One frequent deployment of the term queer
is as a synonym for non-heterosexuals. In
geography, this usage is evident in the dominant equation of queer space with gay and
lesbian space (particularly in urban contexts).
As noted above, such sites are frequently
interpreted as visible expressions of sexual
dissidents that exist (or ought to exist) in opposition to heterosexual spaces. Catherine
Jean Nash (2006) complicates this oneto-one mapping of identity onto space in
her consideration of the development of
Torontos gay village. She argues that this
place is not simply the result of a battle over
the ability to visibly inhabit and appropriate
identifiable territories or neighbourhoods
(2006: 2). Rather it is a location deeply scarred
by myriad battles fought over the social,
political and cultural meanings attributed
to the existence of individuals interested in
same-sex relationships (2006: 2). In short,
she adopts a poststructural approach that
de-essentializes gay and lesbian space and
explores the ways in which Torontos gay village has been a battleground for competing
meanings of homosexual identity. For instance, while assimilationists disapproved
of the gay ghettos bars and bathhouses
and argued that the proper place of gays
and lesbians was in the suburbs where they
could demonstrate that they were just like
heterosexuals, liberationists criticized the
commercial culture that dominated the village as unable to foster an appropriately
militant community. Thus, while dominant
notions of queer space (as synonymous with
gay and lesbian space) portray gays and
lesbians as beyond normativity and the spaces
they appropriate as heroic and liberating,
Nash reinterprets gay and lesbian space as
unfixed, contested and disciplinary space.

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But the term queer emerged in sexuality

studies in critical relation to the terms gay
and lesbian. So Kath Browne (2006a) has
taken the critique of dominant constructions of queer space in another direction.
She argues that because queer is more than
shorthand for LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgendered], geographers ought to consider how it can be used as something other
than an overarching term that describes
sexual dissidents (2006a: 886). Like Nash,
she notes that gay and lesbian spaces do not
necessarily transgress the normative. Sexual
identity politics is frequently about recognizing
or accepting the other. It is about extending
the norm, not transgressing or challenging it.
A recent turn towards assimilationist politics
amongst many mainstream gay and lesbian
organizations has caused many to critique
not just heteronormativity but homonormativity as well. Lisa Duggan describes this
other normativity as a politics that does not
contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility
of a demobilized gay constituency and a
privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored
in domesticity and consumption (2003: 50).
In other words, many gays and lesbians want
nothing more than to be considered normal
so that they might go on with their day-today lives as part of the status quo.5 Browne
therefore argues that since geographies of
sexualities have been narrowly concerned
with the recognition of sexual others, this
work is not necessarily queer. And by queer
she means operating beyond powers and
controls that enforce normativity (2006a:
889). She states that queer enquiries should
question the ideal of inclusion and entail
radical (re)thinkings, (re)drawings, (re)conceptualiations, (re)mappings that could
(re)make bodies, spaces and geographies
(2006a: 888). As such, for Browne, queer
spaces are distinct from gay and lesbian spaces
and queer geographies should transgress
boundaries such as hetero/homo and man/

woman in order to go beyond normativity

and render space fluid.
This move to distinguish queer geographies
from the mere study of sexual others is a productive one since queer is indeed not merely a
synonym for LGBT. Queer theory is a critical
approach that interrogates sexual normativities and orthodoxies. And it recognizes
sexuality as a non-essential or unfixed aspect
of subjectivity. But to state that subjectivity
is unfixed is not to state that it is fluid and
capable of obliterating boundaries. Browne
states that she does not see queer as a simplistically appropriated identity category
(2006a: 888). Yet she does not repudiate
identity politics and ponders what constitutes
queer subjectivities and queer spatialities.
So, though not a straightforward process,
for Browne it is possible to live queer lives.
Even if we accept this proposition that queer
is a thing that can be possessed or animated
by individuals, we must call attention to
the fact that no individual that lives in the
social world is free-floating or disembodied.
As Judith Halberstam argues, postmodern
gender theory has largely been (wrongly)
interpreted as both a description of and a
call for greater degrees of flexibility and
fluidity (2005: 19). As are all binaries, the
binary division of fluidity or rigidity is a fiction
that is more productively deconstructed than
embraced. So while I agree with Browne that
queer and LGBT are not synonymous, I question the analytical usefulness of defining
queer as fluid and beyond normativity. Such
a move does not reconfigure the mapping
of resistant/oppressive onto homosexuals/
heterosexuals. It merely supplants the homosexuals in this equation with queers and dismisses Foucaults lesson that where there is
power, there is resistance, and yet, or rather
consequently, this resistance is never in a
position of exteriority in relation to power
(Foucault, 1978: 95).
Like Browne, Catherine Jean Nash and
Alison Bain (2007) distinguish gay and lesbian
space from queer space. But while Browne

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deals with queer space in abstract terms, they
explore the term queers appropriation as
an identity category and political signifier
by the Toronto Womens Bathhouse Committee (TWBC). The TWBC explicitly attempts to queer space in their organization
of a womens event called the Pussy Palace.
So Nash and Bain explore the ways in
which queer theorys destabilization of
sexual and gender categories inform the
organizers creation of this social space that
aims to support uninhibited, casual sexual
encounters between women. Their findings
are rather different than we are led to expect
by the organizers intentions and Brownes
description of queer space. Rather than facilitating the fluid and unconstrained play of
gender and sexuality, they argue that multiple exclusions operate in this queer space.
While the organizers state that their aim is
to dismantle the constructs of masculinity,
femininity and appropriate lesbian conduct,
Nash and Bain argue that the event in fact
portrays middle-class lesbians as uptight and
promotes a stereotypical view of vulgar or
raunchy working-class sexuality. Nonetheless, a steep cover charge ensures that
working class lesbians are not the ones in
attendance. In addition, although the TWBC
adopts a trans-friendly policy, Nash and
Bains ethnographic observations attest to
an underlying transphobia at the event. So,
despite the conscious aims of the organizers,
this embodied queer space is far from radically open and transgressive.
Though most likely a liberating space for
some women in certain respects, the Pussy
Palace simultaneously operates as a disciplinary space. In this site, queer womens sexuality is disciplined through the maintenance
of particular class and gender norms. Thus
Nash and Bains analysis calls attention to the
mutual constitution of sexuality with other
processes of signification; or, in other words,
the fact that queers (or LGBTs) are not just
queers (or LGBTs). When queer is deployed
as an identity category or subjectivity, it does

not exist on its own. Any embodied analysis

of queer or gay or lesbian spaces must take
this fact into account. But Nash and Bain
limit their analysis to the ways in which queer
sexuality is inflected by gender and class and
stop short of considering this queer site as a
racialized space. This omission calls attention to the fact that though there is evidence
of a desire to complicate understandings of
queer identities, communities and spaces
within the geographical sexuality and space
literature, this project has been pursued in
strikingly limited ways. Since gay and lesbian
or queer spaces are frequently commercial
spaces, class has been on the agenda to the
extent that there is concern that such spaces
are unevenly consumed and therefore exclusionary (for some very different approaches
to this topic, see Knopp, 1992; Bell, 2001;
Nast, 2002; Rushbrook, 2002; Bell and
Binnie, 2004; Bassi, 2006). Gender analyses
have been so well integrated into queer geographies that in a recent literature review,
Richard Phillips states, By sexual, I refer
to both sexuality and gender (2004: 265).
Further, while gays and lesbians remain the
primary subject of the literature, the need to
expand analyses to bisexuals, transsexuals
and transgendered persons (ie, the other
queers) is frequently noted. These attempts
to explore queer space as more than a sexed
space, however, have not generally been
coupled with recognition that queer space,
as characterized in much of the literature, is
implicitly white space.
This is not to say that there are not frequent acknowledgements within the queer
geographies literature that more work needs
to be done on race and racism. There are.
But such acknowledgements have provided
grounds for potent critique. Acknowledgements of the need for more work on bisexuals,
transsexuals and transgendered persons are
made because existing work addresses gays
and lesbians rather than these sexual others.
Calls for more work on race and racism function rather differently. Queer geographers

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often make this acknowledgement in the

context of scholarship that examines implicitly white subjects. By suggesting that the
place for geographies of sexuality that attend
to processes of racialization is beyond such
scholarship, the fact that all queers are
always and everywhere sexualized and raced
is rendered illegible. Thus race and sexuality
are predominantly understood as analogous
rather than mutually constituted. In this logic,
queers are sexualized while non-whites are
raced and the need for an analysis of race and
racism is considered necessary only when
queers are non-white. The shortcomings of
such a conceptualization of the relationship
between analyses of sexualization and analyses of racialization are evident in the following three examples.
In one of the first articles to attempt to
bring a queer perspective to the study of
sexuality and space and a geographical
perspective to queer theory, Bell et al. (1994)
explore the construction and performance of
sex, gender, identity and space. In particular,
they look at gay and lesbian negotiations
of straight space through examinations of
the figures of the gay skinhead and the
lipstick lesbian. While consideration of the
ways that performances of sex, gender,
identity and space are simultaneously raced
is absent throughout the article, its absence
in relation to the former figure is most obviously problematic. Against those who
criticize the gay skinhead look as fascist,
the authors retort, For them heterosexual
or real skinheads are positioned against
gay style skinheads. But why privilege the
fascist heterosexual skin as real and the
gay skinhead as bad copy? Why privilege
heterosexual space as real and queer space
as pretended, fake or copy? (1994: 37). But
upon planting the radical flag of queerness,
Bell et al. ignore the multifaceted nature
of identity to deny the possibility that gay
skinheads might also be fascists and thus
[elide] issues of race in [their] reconstruction
of queer history (Walker, 1995: 73).

In a second example, Catherine Jean

Nash (2005) traces Toronto gay and lesbian
activists struggles to be defined as a minority in reaction to homophobic and racist
police comments and practices in the 1970s.
She thus explains how despite the fact that
activists had previously derided the creation
of gay ghettoes, [b]y the early 1980s, the
gay ghetto had come to delineate a legitimate space, one that was necessary for the
formation and wellbeing of a distinct and
cohesive gay and lesbian minority group
and one that validated an ethnic minority
politic (Nash, 2005: 129). This is an important contribution to the sexuality and
space literature for its historicization and
thus de-essentialization of gay space. But
though the reader is told early on that gay
neighbourhoods are predominantly white,
male and middle-class preserves (Nash,
2005: 115), Nash does not question or explore
the racial politics of claiming that gay and
lesbian communities are analogous to ethnic
minority communities. 6 By representing
these communities as distinct entities and
failing to explore the complicating factor
that many Toronto gays and lesbians are also
members of ethnic minorities, this story of
the Toronto gay communitys minoritization
is not only incomplete. It implicitly marks
queer space as white.
Finally, in her chapter on Sexual politics
in A companion to political geography, Gill
Valentine (2003) provides a comprehensive
review of citizenship issues for sexual minorities. She notes the injustice of sodomy
laws and the exclusion of gays and lesbians
from the institution of marriage and the
string of rights of privileges that legitimate
couplehood begets. To encompass the range
of dissident sexualities, Valentine highlights
issues of citizenship that are particular to
transsexuals and transgendered persons.
And, recognizing the shortcomings of assimilationist identity politics, she devotes much
time to queer critiques of rights-based strategies. One brief nod to race appears in this

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article when Valentine asserts that gays
and lesbians struggle for citizenship just as
ethnic minorities have done. But, even here,
in this article, which deals with issues that
superficially appear to have to do solely with
the regulation of sexuality, race could have a
much more prominent place. For example,
in his research into early twentieth-century
sodomy court cases in the western USA and
Canada, Nayan Shah has found that sexual
identity is not the determining factor in prosecuting sodomy, but, rather, differentials of
class, age, and race shape the policing that
leads to sodomy and public morals arrest
(2005: 277). And in my own consideration
of the brief history of South Africas only
national lesbian and gay lobbying organization an organization that secured one
of the most comprehensive national regimes
of rights protections for sexual minorities in
the world I explore the ways in which a
failure adequately to address the differential
racializations of its constituents contributed
to its demise (Oswin, 2007).
It is not enough to acknowledge race as
a gap in the literature. Queer geographers
reckon with the fact that sexuality isnt always or only about sexuality, that it is not
an autonomous dimension of experience
(Warner, 1995: 368) in frequent explorations
of the classed and gendered dimensions of
queer lives and spaces. The failure to also
account for sexualization and racialization
as mutually constituted processes is a shortcoming that cannot but render queer geographical analyses unduly partial.
Many geographers have begun to
address this omission. Jasbir Puar (2002)
levels an important critique of queer tourism that rejects celebratory responses to
the fact that queers are now valued as cosmopolitan, mobile, consuming subjects in
diverse locales. Noting that queer women
of colour and other excluded queer others
(p. 943) are not part of consuming queer
tourism circuits, she delivers a significant
blow to the dominant notion of queer space

within geography. She states, While it is

predictable that the claiming of queer space
is lauded as the disruption of heterosexual
space, rarely is that disruption interrogated
also as a disruption of racialized, gendered,
and classed spaces (p. 936). In her analysis
of queer space as an emergent marker of
urban cosmopolitanism, Dereka Rushbrook
similarly notes, Despite the complexity of
the notion, the term gay space or queer space
implies coherence and homogeneity that do
not exist The appearance of homogeneity
conceals exclusionary practices predicated
on other axes of difference, or even on sexual
practices themselves, as well as the labor
that produces these spaces (2002: 203).
Thus she explores the ways in which queers
of color are erased from the discourses of
cosmopolitanism and globalization, as consumers and commodities (Rushbrook,
2002: 184). Further, Glen Elder critiques the
consumption spaces of gay Cape Town as
creating a segregated space of exclusion
(2004: 579). He states, Efforts to create gay
spaces have also come to produce a landscape upon which the norm is understood
to be white and male, or homomasculine
(p. 585). Finally, Heidi Nast maps out how gay
white patriarchies coexist with, and in some
cases displace, heteronormative patriarchies,
shoring up pre-existing racialized and politically and economically conservative processes
of profit-accumulation (2002: 878).7
Through their attention to racial politics
as part of the multidimensionality of queer
lives, these scholars rewrite the dominant
narrative of radical, colonized, claimed
queer space. As Puar insists, the claiming
of space any space, even the claiming of
queer space [is] a process informed by
histories of colonization, these histories
operating in tandem with the disruptive
and potentially transgressive specifics
at hand (2002: 936). The presumption
of an inherent progressiveness of gay and
lesbian or queer reterritorializations of
hitherto straight space is challenged by the

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recognition that homosexuals or queers can

be included amongst those who participate
in the deployment of sexual normativities.
And we are thus taken beyond the heterosexual/homosexual binary to a usage of queer
theory as an approach that critiques the
class, race and gender specific dimensions of
homonormativities and heteronormativities.8
Such work contains the seeds of a geographical utilization of queer theory that
does not simply describe and reify the spaces
of sexual others. But, to realize the promise
of this alternative approach, a recurrent
limitation must be recognized. Though committed to intersectional analysis, the politics
of identity still lingers in the work by Elder,
Nast, Puar and Rushbrook discussed above.
The recognition of the fragmented geographies of power across the homosexual/
heterosexual divide is important. But while
this binary is done away with, others hang
on. Specifically, descriptions of maleness/
femaleness, whiteness/non-whiteness, and
privileged/non-privileged remain rather too
neat. The result is a depiction of dominant gay
white males while faith is placed in women
and queers of colour as still radical subjects.
But the politics of normalization are not
limited to gay white males. As Roderick
Ferguson states: The demand for a racialized
heteronormativity released polymorphous
exclusions targeting women, people of color,
and gays and lesbians at the same time that
it became a regulatory regime, working to
inspire conformity among women, people of
color, and homosexuals (2004: 86). Thus the
temptation to rely on specific queer saviours
is less promising than a queer approach that
has no fixed political referent. Rather than
abstract calls for unity across difference and
the presumptive admonishment of generic
subjects or spaces, analysis of particular
embodiments can more effectively communicate the singularities of unequal power
relations. The next section explores work
that advances such critique beyond identity
politics.

IV Subjectless critique as a queer

approach to space
The work so far surveyed here utilizes queer
theory for the sole purpose of examining
the spatialities of the lives of homosexuals
or queers. In contrast to dominant constructions of queer space, it destabilizes our understanding of queer identities and the spaces
associated with them. But, as we have seen,
queer lives cannot transcend categories or
boundaries. The task of queer theorists,
then, is to embrace the critique of identity
to its fullest extent by abandoning the search
for an inherently radical queer subject and
turning attention to the advancement of a
critical approach to the workings of sexual
normativities and non-normativities. For, as
Judith Butler states, more important than
any presupposition about the plasticity of
identity or indeed its retrograde status is
queer theorys claim to be opposed to the
unwanted legislation of identity (2004: 7).
And queer identities, even when oppositional or counter-identities, are identities
too. So as is the case with any identity,
they obscure particularities and cannot but
work within the confines of power and normativity. The task of queer critique, then, is
simply to do the work of understanding how
norms and categories are deployed. To quote
Butler again, If I am always constituted by
norms that are not of my making, then I have
to understand the ways that constitution
takes place (2004: 15).9
Given the grand aims of transgressing
gender norms and overthrowing heteronormativity that have come to be associated
with queer geographies, this may seem an
argument for a narrowing of its mandate.
In fact, it is an argument for the significant
broadening of queer theorys reach and
relevance within geography. For sexual
norms do much more than simply marginalize homosexuals. This is demonstrated by
turning to additional work by Puar (as both
single author and co-author with Amit Rai)
that develops her queer critique in a series

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of articles that examine sexual normativities
and nonnormativities in the context of US
nationalism and the war on terror.
In Monster, terrorist, fag, Puar and Rai
(2002) adopt a queer approach that goes
beyond a narrow focus on homosexual subjects to consider the construction of normative and non-normative identities and
practices. They argue that the racialized figure
of the Muslim terrorist is simultaneously
sexualized such that queerness as sexual
deviancy is tied to the monstrous figure of the
terrorist as a way to otherize and quarantine
subjects classified as terrorists (2002: 126).
At the same time, this sexually perverse,
racialized figure has been a tool for the normalization and disciplining of domestic gay
and lesbian politics. Thus while emasculation
is offered up as appropriate punishment for
bin Laden, the USA is depicted as a feminist
and gay-friendly safe-haven against an uncivilized Taliban that persecutes women
and homosexuals. Puar and Rai powerfully
argue that the monster-terrorist-fag is reticulated with discourses and practices of
heteronormative patriotism but also in the
resistant strategies of feminist groups, queer
communities, and communities of color
(2002: 140). In their follow-up article, The
remaking of a model minority, Puar and
Rai (2004) continue their analysis of the
network of complicities that structure the
possibilities of resistance (2002: 140) and
challenge the facile invocation of a false
unity (2004: 86) that too often characterize
strategies of solidarity across difference. As
an alternative to this flawed identity politics,
they suggest that the communication of
singularities that must be the new thought
of solidarity (2004: 88). In other words,
careful attention to the specific racialized,
sexualized constructions through which
the war on terror functions is required in
place of declarations of unity based on presumptions that they are just like us.10
Turning to an analysis of Abu Ghraib,
Puar (2004) insightfully argues that, the

focus on purported homosexual acts obscures other forms of gendered violence and
serves a broader racist and sexist, as well as
homophobic, agenda (p. 523). She challenges
dominant gay and lesbian accounts that
privilege the white gay male in the west as
the victim of Abu Ghraib over closeted
and acts-qualified bodies and over bodies
of Iraqi prisoners themselves (2004: 529).
And, again utilizing a queer approach that
goes beyond a narrow focus on homosexual
subjects, she forces us to ask new questions
by pointing out that [r]eports of sodomizing
with chemical light sticks and broomstick
and of Americans inserting fingers into
prisoners anuses also fully implicate the
U.S. guards and raise the specters of interracial and intercultural sex (2004: 531).
Challenging the depiction of the events at
Abu Ghraib as scandalous and exceptional,
Puar demonstrates how these sexualized
events are an intrinsic part of the depravity
of war.
As Elspeth Probyn has stated, sexual
spaces are delineated through coincidence
and not through exclusion (1996: 10). Rather
than clinging to the fiction that we can locate
queer spaces that exist in coherent opposition to heterosexual spaces, we need to intensify examinations of what comes together in
processes of sexualization. By abandoning
belief in the existence of facile geometries of
heroes and hegemons, analysis is opened up
to the myriad uses of sexuality.
While a critique of the concept of queer
space has been the vehicle through which
I have come to make this argument for a
broader use of queer theory in geography, it
should by now be clear that I am simultaneously arguing against the division of space
into queer and straight space. Thus the
following section turns to the limitations
of the notion of heterosexual space. Alison
Blunt and Jane Wills state, Although it remains politically and analytically imperative
to make dissident sexualities visible and to
resist their marginalization, it is also important

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to examine the basis and effectiveness of

heterosexual dominance and to study the
sexed nature of heterosexuality (2000: 161).
The lack of geographical work on heterosexualities is indeed a significant lacuna that
should be urgently addressed.11 The following
section argues that such work is more usefully
undertaken as part of a queer approach rather
than alongside it, as part of a project of breaking down the heterosexual/homosexual binary rather than one that props it up.
V Race, class, gender and
heteronormativities
In his look at the moral contours of
heterosexuality, Phil Hubbard states that
he wants to put aside the focus on queer
theory to focus on the (admittedly more
limited) body of geographical work which
has attempted to theorize, map and critique
heterosexuality itself (2000: 192). He
argues that, far from being a unified and
monolithic system, heterosexualities (like
homosexualities) are obviously manifest in a
variety of different displays of emotion and
intimacy which are inscribed in a variety of
different landscapes (p. 193). Though queer
geographers often invoke straight space as a
dominant space that queers must negotiate,
Hubbard calls attention to the ways in which
heterosexual spaces are variously sexualized
and desexualized. Paying particular attention
to the moral geographies of prostitution,
he asserts that, the sexualized identity of
space is not simply the result of a struggle
between dominant, rigid heterosexuality and
alternative homosexual identities (p. 211).
Hubbard notes that his exploration of the
creation of boundaries between moral and
immoral heterosexual identities is but one
way to interrogate geographies of heterosexuality and further qualifies his argument
by stating that it is only a beginning. The
recognition of the need to challenge monolithic portrayals of heterosexuality is indeed
an important beginning. I take this point of
departure to go in slightly different directions.
First, I argue that once we recognize the need

to deconstruct the heterosexual/homosexual

binary and the purported existence of queer
and straight spaces, it becomes evident that
queer theory does not need to be put aside
to analyse heterosexualities. Rather, it is an
indispensable tool for the task.12 Second, as
discussed above, it is equally important to
challenge the notion that homosexualities
are always and everywhere alternative as
it is to challenge the perception of heterosexualities as always and everywhere
dominant. And finally, a queer geography
that interrogates the multifaceted uses of
all sexualities must focus on the workings
of heteronormativities (and homonormativities) rather than heterosexuality. Thus
sufficient attention can be paid to the ways
in which identities of race, class, and/or gender
either enhance or mute the marginalization
of queers, on the one hand, and the power
of heterosexuals, on the other (Cohen,
1997: 447). The following brief review of
recent works within and beyond geography
demonstrates that only when the focus
falls on a wide range of sexual normativities
and non-normativities will queer theorys
potential as a vital tool for the conduct of
critical geographies be realized.
As a critique of identity, queer theory attends not to who we are but how we are
thought (Halley, 2000: 67). And in Siobhan
Somervilles groundbreaking work Queering
the color line (2000) she demonstrates that
the formation of notions of heterosexuality
and homosexuality emerged in the United
States through (and not merely parallel to) a
discourse saturated with assumptions about
the racialization of bodies (p. 4). Through deft
analyses of sexological, cinematic and literary texts of the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, she argues that the
crisis of homo/heterosexual definition was
intimately tied to racial definitions of black
and white and that therefore, it may not be
possible for the careful scholar of American
culture to glibly separate African-American
identity from homosexual identity, the Negro
from the queer (Reid-Pharr, 2002: 7). In

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Natalie Oswin: Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality 99

David Engs study of Asian-American masculinity, Racial castration (2001), he too asks,
How does the social regulation of sexuality
produce and how is it produced by race?
(p. 5). Considering the ways in which AsianAmerican communities in the USA were
produced through the historical exploitation
of migrant labour as both racialized and
sexualized bodies, Eng explores such topics
as governmental prohibition of the immigration of Chinese women and children
along with male labourers and the stigma of
homosexuality that attached to bachelor
communities in Chinese urban enclaves.
Eng thus challenges conventional understandings of diaspora as organized by race to
reconceptualize it in terms of sexuality and
queerness (on the topic of queerness and
diaspora, see also Gopinath, 2005).
As Cathy Cohen (1997) demonstrates, the
intimate relationship between racialization
and sexualization is by no means a thing of
the past. In her now-classic call for queer
theorists to broaden their narrow focus
from non-heterosexuals to all sorts of nonnormative sexualities, she highlights the
fact that sexuality and struggles against
sexual normalization [are] central to the
politics of all marginal communities (p. 444).
In such instances as the Moynihan Reports
pathologization of Negro families to the
demonization of welfare queens, it is not
the nonheterosexist behavior of these black
[and Latina] men and women that is under
fire, but rather the perceived nonnormative
sexual behavior and family structures of
these individuals, whom many queer activists
without regard to the impact of race, class,
or gender would designate as part of the
heterosexist establishment (Cohen, 1997:
456).13 Cohen thus takes Hubbards attention to the moral geographies of heterosexuality in different directions. She calls
attention to the fact that deviant heterosexuals such as prostitutes are not the only
heterosexuals whose citizenship is devalued.
Meredith Raimondo (2003; 2005) brings
this insight into geography in two articles

that attend to the racialized, sexed, classed

and gendered popular geographies of AIDS.14
She argues that [u]nlike constructions of
AIDS that equated gay men with inevitable
death, risk lay not within the category of
heterosexuality itself but in particular perverse heterosexualities (2005: 61). Though
the prevalence of heterosexual transmission
means that AIDS can no longer be cast as a
gay disease, the threat is recontained through
a discourse that queers heterosexuality.
Spoiled domesticity is a key trope in stories
that focus on crack houses in racialized ghettoes of migrant labourers as the locus of
AIDS transmission. [R]eports linked race,
poverty, sexual perversity, and reproduction
to characterize the bodies of women of color
(and other feminized, racialized bodies) as
uniquely to blame for the transmission of
HIV. In particular, mothers failed to provide
a proper home for their children; rather, the
house became a source of danger (Raimondo,
2003: 396).
Migration, an obviously geographical
preoccupation, has been a particularly fruitful
site for the deployment of a queer approach
that goes beyond the study of queers to
consider the workings of heteronormativities. As Eithne Luibheid argues:
Heteronormative policies and practices
which subordinate immigrants not just
on grounds of sexual orientation but also on
grounds of gender, racial, class, and cultural
identities that may result in undesirable
sexual acts or outcomes (such as too many
poor children) are deployed by the state
to select who may legally enter the United
States and to incorporate immigrants into
hegemonic nationalist identities and projects. (Luibheid, 2004: 227)

Not only same-sex families are disallowed

within government immigration regulations.
So are families that are not based on blood
or official legal ties or that cannot meet income or human capital requirements or
whose women are deemed breeders
(Luibheid, 2004: 230). And, as Somerville
(2005) explains, the family reunification

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programmes that have emerged in place

of more overtly racialized immigration
schemes are not only unjust in their exclusion
of same-sex couples from the definition of
family. They also revive the underlying
eugenicist logic of previous schemes that
privileged immigrants with particular national
origins. The policy of family unification
allowed the law to appear facially colorblind even as it was designed to achieve
racialized effects, specifically maintaining
the existing racial makeup of incoming
immigrant groups (2005: 85). As a result,
both homosexual and heterosexual new
immigrants who exist outside the institution
of marriage and the nuclear family face
significant obstacles to naturalization in
the USA. This is the legacy of immigration
prohibitions on adulterers that were put
in place in the 1952 US Immigration and
Nationality Act to prevent immigrant communities from straying from normative definitions of the family.15
VI Queer theory and critical
geographies
The experiences of non-heterosexuals
are no longer excluded within critical geographical work. This important change is
undoubtedly the result of various disciplinary
engagements with queer theory. And for as
long as non-heterosexuals are discriminated
against, queer spaces will remain something
that, to borrow Spivaks phrase, queers
cannot not want. So there is certainly a need
for the recent geographical readings of
queer spaces that help us understand queer
cultural politics as contested sites in which
racializations, genderings and classed processes take place. There are also other geographical uses for queer theory. Much of the
work that I have highlighted adopts a queer
approach to such issues as transnational
labour flows, diaspora, immigration, public
health, globalization, domesticity, geopolitics and poverty. It demonstrates the use
of queer theory to these central concerns
of critical geography far beyond analysis of

their relationship to gay, lesbian, bisexual

or transgendered lives. Once we dismiss the
presumption that queer theory offers only a
focus on queer lives and an abstract critique
of the heterosexualization of space, we can
utilize it to deconstruct the hetero/homo
binary and examine sexualitys deployments
in concert with racialized, classed and gendered processes. Queering our analysis
thus helps us to position sexuality within
multifaceted constellations of power. As
critical geographers seek to understand these
constellations, the advancement of a queer
approach alongside postcolonial, feminist,
critical race and materialist approaches will
most certainly help to ask new questions
and illuminate a broader range of critical
possibilities.
Notes
1.

2.
3.

4.

5.

Bell, Binnie, Cream and Valentines All hyped up

and no place to go (Gender, Place and Culture,
1994) and Bell and Valentines edited volume
Mapping desire (1995a) were the first contributions
to the queer geography literature. Bell, Binnie
and Valentine have continued to publish prolifically
in this still-growing field (see Bell, 1995; 2001;
Valentine, 1996; 2002; 2003; Binnie, 1997a; 1997 b;
2004; Binnie and Valentine, 1999; Bell and Binnie,
2000; 2004).
For work on these topics, see Hemmings (2002)
and Browne (2004; 2006b).
The concept of heteronormativity points to the
societal privileging of heterosexuality that makes
heterosexual identification and heterosexual
relationships seem natural or normal. Though this
concept has been used to support the mapping of
resistance/oppression binaries onto homosexual
identities/heterosexual identities, much of the
work surveyed in this article demonstrates
that because sexuality is implicated in broader
structures of power, racism, sexism and capitalist
exploitation are just as integral to the functioning
of heteronormativities as is homophobia.
While Bell, Binnie and Valentine were at the
vanguard of early queer geographies, they were
not alone in advancing this particular notion of
queer space. See Myslik (1996) as well as the
contributions to the volume edited by Bell and
Valentine (1995a) and Ingram et al. (1997).
For more on homonormativity and gay and
lesbian politics of normalcy, see Warner (1999). In
geography, see: Nast (2002); engagements with

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Natalie Oswin: Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality 101

6.
7.

8.

9.

10.
11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

Nast by Elder (2002), Oswin (2004) and Sothern

(2004); and Richardson (2005).
For an excellent critique of arguments that
homosexuality is like race, see Halley (2000).
I highlight work that explicitly challenges the
dominant disciplinary construction of queer space
here. Other notable work in queer geographies
that attends to sexualization as a racialized process
include: Bacchetta (2002); Elder (1998); Knopp
(1998); Jazeel (2005); Sugg (2003).
In this respect, these works resonate with the new
queer studies, an interdisciplinary body of work
that has recently emerged to dissect the ways
in which discourses of sexuality are inextricable
from prior and continuing histories of colonialism,
nationalism, racism, and migration (Gopinath,
2005: 3). For an insightful review of works that
initiated this turn, see Reid-Pharr (2002) and for
more excellent samples of this new queer studies
work, see Eng et al. (2005).
For similar calls for non-identarian queer critique
within geography, see: Howell (2007); Hubbard
(2007); and Sothern (2006).
See Puar (2006) for further analysis of homonormativity and US nationalism.
Many of the contributions to a 2006 special issue
of ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical
Geographies on Sexuality and gender address this
gap (see Besio and Moss, 2006).
Hubbard (2007) concurs on this point in his more
recent writings on the geographies of heterosexualities.
Also see Roderick Fergusons Aberrations in
black (2004) for his queer of color critique of
sociologys role in the creation of not only the
homosexual, but the African American homosexual, the black unwed mother, the African
American family, and the heterosexual black
man (p. 81) and Elizabeth Povinellis (2006) postcolonial and queer approach to intimate relations
and liberal governance.
For other examples of geographical work that
intertwines analyses of race, gender, class and
heterosexuality, see: Elder (2003); Nast (2000);
Phillips (2006); and Thomas (2004).
In a chapter of his The globalization of sexuality
titled Queer mobility and the politics of migration
and tourism, Jon Binnie (2004) deals with postcolonial critiques of queer tourism by stating what
is wrong with a sense of entitlement about being
able to travel? Why should not lesbians and gay
men share a sense of entitlement to travel across
national borders without harassment? Heterosexuality is still naturalized as normal; straights
still have a sense of entitlement to cross space
without having their heterosexuality called into
question (2004: 101). The works I have discussed

here challenge both the empirical validity of this

declaration of the ease of all heterosexual border
crossings and its epistemological underpinnings.

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