Psychic geographies of queer multiculturalism: Reading Fanon, settler colonialism and race in queer space

Abstract

Utilizing Fanon’s theories of psychic, social and embodied processes of racialization and racism, this article examines Toronto’s gay village as a site of queer settler multiculturalism and its impacts on Black and Indigenous lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, Two-Spirit and additional (LGBTQ2+) youth experiencing homelessness. I build on Fanon’s arguments of cultural alienation, the collective unconscious and white colonial anxiety and desire to analyze current iterations of queer settler colonialism and anti-Black racism within the village. Specifically, I argue that the village maintains a collective queer multicultural unconscious through social interactions and forms of representation that seek to tightly control Blackness and Indigeneity within queer space. By placing Fanon in dialogue with Black and Indigenous Studies scholarship, and interviews with Black and Indigenous LGBTQ2+ youth, I present how youth encounter and, to some extent, refuse the white and settler colonial queer multiculturalism in Toronto’s village.