Ghetto revolts : edited by Peter H. Rossi. Transaction Books (Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903), 1970, 321 pp., paperback-$2.95.

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in changes within gay ghettos, villages, precincts, and neighbourhoods in different cities and regions, particularly in the West. This includes concerns from some constituencies about the decline – or de-gaying – of some queer neighbourhoods, coupled with commentary about the emergence of newer places, sometimes espoused as mixed, gay-friendly, or post-gay. Drawing on the South African experience, the question of how central these debates should stand in gay geographical scholarship is posed. Although it is increasingly acknowledged that the “old gay ghetto debates” are in some ways parochial (both spatially and theoretically), the dominance of such concerns remains pervasive in Western gay space theorisation. In this paper, attention is focused on Western theorisations of the relationship between gay sexualities, its links to specific forms of gay space such as gay ghettos and neighbourhoods, and the South Africa context. The contention is that gay spaces (in the form of consolidated space, or villages) are not a necessary outcome of lived gay identities. It is argued that in South Africa differently constructed gay identities are differently spatialised and ultimately incongruent with Western theory. The investigation supports the growing scholarship that suggests Western theorisation of the links between gay sexual identity and space is not universally applicable.