There is no queer space; there are only spaces used by queers or put to queer use. Space has no natural character, no inherent meaning, no intrinsic status as public or private. As Michel de Certeau has argued, it is always invested with meaning by its users as well as its creators, and even when its creators have the power to define its official and dominant meaning, its users are usually able to develop tactics that allow them to use the space in alternative, even oppositional ways that confound the designs of its creators.
– George Chauncey, “‘Privacy Could Only Be Had in Public’: Gay Uses of the Streets” (1996)
Is there a “queer space?” The concepts of identity and its spatial experience as we know them today are rigidly compartmentalized. Binaries surround us, both physically and psychologically. All the world’s a stage, but the sphere always seems to split: exit stage left or stage right. Despite our best efforts to upend these conditioned distinctions, we still live and move through them every day. The pathological alienation of one thing (“normal”) from the other (“abnormal”) can differ from one locale to the next, even by mere steps. While internal identities may seem to be more fluid, external pressures carefully build partitions: one is gay or straight, queer or not, transgender or cisgender, just to name a few. How do these issues relate to space, both real and imagined?
Queer-identifying or not (yet another binary), how do you feel when you walk down the street? Do you change your bodily demeanor based on the neighborhood? Are you fearful or fearless? Do you ever wonder, “are my jeans too tight? Is my hair too long or too short? Will my makeup be ‘socially acceptable’ here? Do I ‘look queer?’ Am I in danger? How can I safely blend in as I walk from point A to point B?”
This experimental and compact course will explore the long histories and current states of queerness—a broad term that necessitates discussion without definitive conclusions—, inviting students to reflect on their own experiences, regardless of personal identities, sexuality, gender, or otherwise. That is to say, queer-identifying or not, how do you encounter the urban landscape? Who manufactures urban meaning? Who builds our spatial experiences? Who, how, and why might one want to confound the designs of its creators?
Using positionality as our primary method of inquiry, this course asks participants to question their own identities within space, including—and especially—the complications that arise from that very term, “identity.” By interrogating past and current laws (social, stately) that govern neighborhoods here and everywhere, students are encouraged to challenge and consider a wide range of phenomenological messages and experiences through personal reflections on select and invited sources (written, felt, built, painted). This course is open to all.
If you are interested, please email the instructor at aflynn@mit.edu.
