Heterotopic Potential of Darkness: Exploration and Experimentation of Queer Space in Sarah Waters’s Neo-Victorian Trilogy

This article argues that darkness contributes to the creation of, and expands the concept of, heterotopias. In Sarah Waters’s neo-Victorian trilogy, consisting of Tipping the Velvet (1998), Affinity (1999), and Fingersmith (2002), her characters utilize darkness as their queer heterotopic space in order to call into question dominant heteronormative ideologies. Darkness plays an important role at the inception of the characters’ romantic relationships by facilitating space that allows their non-normative feelings to be expressed, thereby bringing queer desire to the forefront of each narrative. Darkness is a critical factor that renders a space heterotopic, as it blurs the boundary between heteronormative and queer, hence allowing transgression of the characters within Waters’s novels. Within queer heterotopic space created out of the darkness, there is a confluence of opposing values that enables the characters to examine the possibility of transcending heteronormativity and envisioning queer futures.

Ruina/basural: Lógicas temporales y espaciales de la ciudad de La Paz en Saenz y Viscarra

This article analyzes spatio-temporal logics in the representation of the city of La Paz in Imágenes Paceñas by Jaime Saenz and the urban chronicles of Víctor Hugo Viscarra. Juxtaposing the concepts of chrononormativity and queer time, it explores how linear temporal logic remains insufficient for the understanding of the city and its inhabitants in the two narrative projects. The article postulates that the marginal spaces of architectural ruins and garbage dumps, and the marginalized people who inhabit queer space-time are key to “revealing the hidden city” and understanding its contradictory place in the national narrative and space.

In Pursuit of Visibility: Queer Space Approach to Community Architecture in Jamaica

<p>Public space is a site of contestation where people enact their identities and exercise their citizenship. Often non-conforming individuals and communities are not given this opportunity, existing solely on the fringes of these spaces. Queer, especially Trans-identified, people are members of multi-marginalised groups grappling with the realities of discrimination in Jamaica’s (public) spaces. This thesis will explore queer spaces, specifically, how architecture can be used to create safe spaces for the inclusion of the displaced Trans* youth of Jamaica. While queer space has been explored conceptually in architecture, there is now a pressing need to bring physicality to this corporeal subject. How can the experience of this community be translated into architectural expression? Playing on the theme of visibility, this research aims to develop a design of physical space through the analysis of various visual media, along with other experimental participatory design techniques. With input from members of the community, the architectural intervention will remain relevant to its target user community and grounded in its users’ Jamaican context.</p>

In Pursuit of Visibility: Queer Space Approach to Community Architecture in Jamaica

<p>Public space is a site of contestation where people enact their identities and exercise their citizenship. Often non-conforming individuals and communities are not given this opportunity, existing solely on the fringes of these spaces. Queer, especially Trans-identified, people are members of multi-marginalised groups grappling with the realities of discrimination in Jamaica’s (public) spaces. This thesis will explore queer spaces, specifically, how architecture can be used to create safe spaces for the inclusion of the displaced Trans* youth of Jamaica. While queer space has been explored conceptually in architecture, there is now a pressing need to bring physicality to this corporeal subject. How can the experience of this community be translated into architectural expression? Playing on the theme of visibility, this research aims to develop a design of physical space through the analysis of various visual media, along with other experimental participatory design techniques. With input from members of the community, the architectural intervention will remain relevant to its target user community and grounded in its users’ Jamaican context.</p>

Cruising the staged Wonderland: Scenographic photography and the queering of space

This article attempts to introduce and define the creative practice of ‘scenographic photography’ through the exploration of a body of practice-based research completed as part of a Ph.D. at the University of Tasmania in 2018. As research, it examines how traditionally representational forms of photography and scenography can inform each other through the more performative mode of ‘scenographic photography’, an interdisciplinary neologism operating between the performing, spatial and visual arts. Throughout this article, in attempting to define ‘scenographic photography’ as an emergent field, I will concurrently explore how queer space making was used as a critical tool for the research, visualization, execution and exhibiting of this body of work. The title of the body of work – Cruising Wonderland – refers to a specific ‘beat’ site in Sydney associated with illicit encounters and the homophobic violence it engendered during the 1980s, as well as an embodied means of re-presenting such traumatic histories. Within Cruising Wonderland scenographic scale-model making is adopted as a critical tool with which to interrogate specific sites of queer trauma. The inherent ‘wonder’ and fascination associated with the art of the miniature encourages the possibility of a reparative reading not always possible via the explicit documentary tradition of photographing actual sites of trauma. Once presented the audience are required to ‘cruise’ the darkened exhibition environment, like the ‘beat’ spaces referenced in the work, with an acute sensory awareness of their surroundings, of fellow spectators and how they, as participants within Wonderland, perform and are perceived by others. This immersive approach to engaging with the work is designed to encourage a process of empathic engagement, illuminating often-invisible histories, allowing us to move towards reparation through active re-witnessing.

By Me Shall He Be Nursed! Queer Identity and Representation in The Mahabharata

The Mahabharata is a treasure-trove of the cultural memories of the Hindus. The grand Epic has entertained and edified our society through its numerous identity-relevant narratives since time immemorial. The longevity of The Mahabharata lies in its capacity to adapt, adopt and re-fashion the account, which grants endless opportunities of initiating open-ended debate. The grand Epic has shaped our values and shared a template by which a life guided by Dharma is to be lived. The dialogic text continues to contribute to the resolution of our emotional angst and existential dilemmas. Much ahead of its times, the Epic revels in the liminality that is apparent in the narratives of the gender-queer people who are an integral part of its culture-scape. This paper seeks to study two liminal figures in the Epic narrative – Shikhandi, the trans-gender Prince of Panchala, and Yuvanashwa, the pregnant King, who swayed between gendered identities and challenged the hegemonic heteronormative sexual framework, thereby opening avenues of conversation related to marginalization, resistance and empowerment. The paper also examines the queer cases of King Sudyumna and King Bhangashwan, who questioned the symbolic binaries of gender and delineated a horizon of possibilities. The aim here is to measure the resistance of the genderqueer against the prescriptive order of subjectivities and assess the impact and the outcome. Drawing from the deconstructivist and the queer theories, the study foregrounds the trauma and the resistance of the marginal. These narratives establish The Mahabharata as one of the earliest texts to have a meaningful discourse in the queer-space.

Queer Space: Toilet Provision, Access and Inclusion in the West Midlands

Introduction This article explores issues relating to toilet provision in queer spaces. With a specific focus on the implementation of gender neutral toilets, it interrogates both practical and symbolic issues of inclusivity and accessibility. Methods The findings presented in this paper are based on 12 semi-structured interviews that were conducted and analysed in 2020. The data was analysed thematically, utilising an inductive approach to analysis. Results The results from this study highlight that spaces often considered ‘inclusionary’ operate within a number of ‘exclusionary’ frameworks. These unspoken and informal ‘rules’ and practices operate to exclude people considered ‘undesirable’ and function to uphold power structures that privilege cisgender, white gay men. Conclusions This article extends our understanding of the ways in which people engage with, and access, both gender neutral and sex-segregated toilets. Through an analysis of complex issues relating to accessibility, inclusivity and the politicisation of queer spaces, this article argues that the implementation of gender neutral toilets holds strong practical and symbolic power within a heteronormative, cis-normative society. Policy Implications The results from this study indicate that providing more gender neutral spaces improves accessibility for a range of people, but also has significant political power in challenging cis-normative, heteronormative standards.

Psychic geographies of queer multiculturalism: Reading Fanon, settler colonialism and race in queer space

Utilizing Fanon’s theories of psychic, social and embodied processes of racialization and racism, this article examines Toronto’s gay village as a site of queer settler multiculturalism and its impacts on Black and Indigenous lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit and additional (LGBTQ2+) youth experiencing homelessness. I build on Fanon’s arguments of cultural alienation, the collective unconscious and white colonial anxiety and desire to analyze current iterations of queer settler colonialism and anti-Black racism within the village. Specifically, I argue that the village maintains a collective queer multicultural unconscious through social interactions and forms of representation that seek to tightly control Blackness and Indigeneity within queer space. By placing Fanon in dialogue with Black and Indigenous Studies scholarship, and interviews with Black and Indigenous LGBTQ2+ youth, I present how youth encounter and, to some extent, refuse the white and settler colonial queer multiculturalism in Toronto’s village.