From Nowhere: Provincializing Gay Life

Abstract

Using contemporary and historical sources about one medium-sized provincial city in England, this short paper examines the distinctive features of gay life outside major metropolitan cities. This provocation engages with the question of violence and discrimination against LGBT people in small and medium sized European cities. However, it focuses more on thinking about everyday life in such cities. Conceptually, the paper attempts to provincialize certain key theoretical assumptions about contemporary sexual politics. Empirically, this short paper draws on literary and archival sources about gay life in Leicester (and the broader English East Midlands region) in the late 20th century, along with ethnographic observations conducted in the city over the last decade. In thinking about these issues through a diverse range of empirical material, this paper engages with Catherine J. Nash and Andrew Gorman-Murray’s call for geographers to utilize assemblage thinking to help theorize how contemporary sexual lives and sexual politics are shaped by the coming together of recent socio-legal changes and various new socio-technical arrangements.