Locating the state in queer space: GLBT non-profit organizations in Vermont, USA

Abstract

The current upsurge of literature on sexuality and space has largely ignored the recent proliferation of gay and lesbian non-profit organizations providing queer space and heralding themselves as sites of counterpublicity. Work on voluntary-sector organizations has focused on their role in taking on state functions devolved to them by means of neoliberal restructuring, and emphasizes the resultant blurring of the state–civil society boundary. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken in Vermont, USA, and informed by neo-Marxian state theory, we conclude that state power is in fact constitutive of the material and discursive configurations of queer non-profit organizations, which have come to embody a form of queer space peculiar to advanced liberal democracy. We argue for a sceptical analysis of non-profit claims of providing autonomous space of queer representation and call for a critical re-placing of queer public space.