This article examines the ways that sexual and gendered identities are played out in space. By tracing a journey from London to Brighton and back taken during ethnographic fieldwork, it argues that that the complicated ways in which gendered and sexual identities unfold in space reveal the tensions and contradictions in both the real and imagined spaces of lesbian and gay urbanism. Through focusing on the tensions that arose in this journey, this article explores the imaginary of the queer city and the visual regimes and material and embodied practices that construct and occupy these spaces. By drawing on both Judith Butler's and Pierre Bourdieu's work on performativity, embodiment, and cultural capital, this article offers the concept of the lesbian habitus to make sense of the visual and embodied cultures of lesbian identity spaces.
Adkins, L.
, &
Skeggs, B.
(2004). Feminism after Bourdieu.
Oxford
, UK:
Blackwell
.
2.
Anderson, B.
(1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism.
London: Verso
.
3.
Bell, D.
, &
Binnie, J.
(2000). The sexual citizen: Queer politics and beyond .
Cambridge
, UK:
Polity
.
4.
Berman, M.
(1986, Fall).
Take it to the streets: Conflict and community in public space
. Dissent, pp.
476-485
.
5.
Black, D.
, &
Gates, G.
(2000).
Demographics of the gay and lesbian population in the United States: Evidence from systematic data sources
. Demography, 73(2),
139-154
.
6.
Black, D.
, &
Henderson, V.
(1998).
A theory of urban growth
. Journal of Political Economy, 107(2),
252-284
.
7.
Bourdieu, P.
(1986). Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste.
London: Routledge
.
8.
Bourdieu, P.
(1990). The logic of practice.
Cambridge
, UK:
Polity.
9.
Bourdieu, P.
(1998). Practical reason: On the theory of action.
Cambridge
, UK:
Polity.
10.
Bourdieu, P.
, &
Wacquant, L.J.D.
(1992). An invitation to reflexive sociology.
Chicago: University of Chicago
.
11.
Bridge, G.
, &
Watson, S.
(Eds.). (2000). A companion to the city .
Oxford
, UK:
Blackwell
.
12.
Butler, J.
(1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of sex.
London: Routledge
.
13.
Butler, J.
(1996). Excitable speech: A politics of the performative .
New York: Routledge
.
14.
Butler, J.
(1999). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity.
New York: Routledge
. (Original work published 1990)
15.
Butler, J.
(1997).
Merely cultural
. Social Text,
52-53
,
265-277
.
16.
Case, S.E.
(1993). Towards a butch-femme aesthetic. In
H. Abelove
,
M. A. Barale
, &
D. M. Halperin
(Eds.), The lesbian and gay studies reader (pp. 299-305).
London: Routledge
.
17.
Castells, M.
(1983). The city and the grassroots.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
18.
Chisolm, D.
(2005). Queer constellations: Subcultural space in the wake of the city.
London: University of Minnesota Press
.
19.
Davis, M.D.
, &
Kennedy, E.L.
(1994). Boots of leather, slippers of gold—The history of a lesbian community. Middlesex, UK:
Penguin
.
20.
Debord, G.
(2002). Perspectives for conscious alterations in everyday life. In
B. Highmore
(Ed.), The everyday life reader.
London: Routledge
.
21.
De Certeau, M.
(1984). The practice of everyday life.
Berkeley: University of California Press
.
22.
D'Emilio, J.
(1983). Sexual politics: The making of a homosexual minority in the United States 1940-1970.
Chicago: Chicago University Press
.
23.
Delany, S.R.
(1999). Times Square red, Times Square blue.
New York: NYU Press
.
24.
Faderman, L.
(1991). Odd girls out and twilight lovers: A history of lesbian life in twentieth century America.
London: Penguin
.
25.
Featherstone, M.
(1991). Consumer culture and postmodernism.
London: Sage
.
26.
Florida, R.
(2002).
The economic geography of talent
. Annals of the Association of American Geographers,92(4),
743-755
.
27.
Florida, R.
(2003). The rise of the creative class and how it's transforming work, community and everyday life.
New York: Basic Books
.
28.
Fraser, M.
(1999).
Classing queer, politics in competition
. Theory Culture and Society, 16(2),
107-131
.
29.
Fraser, N.
(1997). Justice interruptus: Critical reflections on the postsocialist condition.
New York: Routledge
.
30.
Green, S.F.
(1997). Urban amazons lesbian feminism and beyond in the gender and sexuality battles of London.
London: Macmillan
.
31.
Halberstam, J.
(1998). Female masculinity.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press
.
32.
Halberstam, J.
(2005). In a queer place and time: Transgendered bodies subcultural lives.
London: NYU Press
.
33.
Hennessy, R.
(1995). Queer visibility and commodity culture. In
L. Nicholson
&
S. Seidman
(Eds.), Social postmodernism.
Cambridge
, UK:
Cambridge University Press
.
34.
Keith, M.
, &
Pile, S.
(1993). Place and the politics of identity.
London: Routledge
.
35.
Lefebvre, H.
(1991a). Critique of everyday life (Vol. 1).
London: Verso
.
36.
Lefebvre, H.
(1991b). The production of spaceOxford
, UK:
Blackwell
.
37.
McNay, L.
(2000). Gender and agency: Reconfiguring the subject in feminist and social theory.
Cambridge
, UK:
Polity.
38.
Munt, S.
(1998a). Butch/femme: Inside lesbian genderLondon: Cassell
.
39.
Munt, S.
(1998b). Heroic desire, lesbian identity and cultural space.
London: Cassell
.
40.
Nestle, J.
(1981).
Butch/fem relationships: Sexual courage in the 1950s
. Heresies: Sex Issue, 1(3),
21-24
.
41.
Nestle, J.
(1987). A restricted country.
New York : Firebrand
.
42.
Nestle, J.
(1992). The persistent desire: A femme-butch reader.
Boston: Alyson
.
43.
Probyn, E.
(1993). Sexing the self: Gendered positions in cultural studies.
London: Routlege
.
44.
Quilley, S.
(1997). Constructing Manchester's “new urban village”: Gay space in the entrepreneurial city. In G
. B. Ingram
,
A. M. Bouthillette
, &
Y. Retter
(Eds.), Queers in space: Communities, public places, sites of resistance.
Seattle, WA: Bay Press
.
45.
Retter, Y.
(1997). Lesbian spaces in Los Angeles, 1970-1990. In
G. B. Ingram
,
A. M. Bouthillette
, &
Y. Retter
(Eds.), Queers in space: Communities, public places, sites of resistance .
Seattle, WA: Bay Press
.
46.
Roof, J.
(1991). A lure of knowledge: Lesbian sexuality and theory .
New York: Columbia University Press
.
47.
Sennett, R.
(1990). The conscience of the eye: The design and social life of cities.
London: Norton
.
48.
Simmel, G.
(1971). On individuality and social forms: Selected writings .
London: University of Chicago Press
. (Original work published 1907)
49.
Skeggs, B.
(1997). Formations of class and gender—becoming respectable.
London: Sage
.
50.
Skeggs, B.
(2004). Class, self and culture.
London : Routledge
.
51.
Skeggs, B.
(2005).
The making of class and gender through visualizing moral subject formation
. Sociology, 39(5),
965-982
.
52.
Soja, E.W.
(1996). Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Oxford, UK:
Blackwell
.
53.
Valentine, G.M.
(1993a).
Desperately seeking Susan: A geography of lesbian friendships
. Area, 25(2),
109-116
.
54.
Valentine, G.M.
(1993b).
(Hetero)sexing space: Lesbian perceptions and experiences of everyday environments. Environment and Planning D
, Society and Space, 11,
395-413
.
55.
Valentine, G.M.
(1993c).
Negotiating and managing multiple sexual identities: Lesbian time/space strategies
. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18,
237-248
.
56.
Valentine, G.M.
(1995).
Out and about geographies of lesbian landscapes
. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14,
96-112
.
57.
Walker, L.M.
(1993).
How to recognize a lesbian: The cultural politics of looking like what you are
. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 18,
866-890
.
58.
Walkowtz, J.
(1992). City of dreadful delight. Narratives of sexual danger in late Victorian London.
London: Virago
.
59.
Waltzer, M.
(1986, Fall).
Pleasures and costs of urbanity
. Dissent, pp.
470-475
.
60.
Warner, M.
(1999). The trouble with normal: Sex, politics and the ethics of queer life.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
.
61.
Wilson, E.
(1991). The sphinx in the city.
London : Virago
.
62.
Zizek, S.
(1997).
Multiculturalism, or, the cultural logic of multicultural capitalism
. New Left Review, 223,
28-51
.
