Queer Diffusions

Abstract

Critical perspectives on space and spatiality have been underdeveloped theoretically and underapplied empirically in the context of queer studies (including queer theory). In this paper we demonstrate how critical perspectives on one form of spatiality, diffusion, can enhance understandings of queer cultures, identities, and politics. We begin by reviewing traditional approaches to diffusion within geography and explicating a specifically queer approach to the topic. Our approach builds on existing critical perspectives and certain principles of structurationism. We then apply this approach to our empirical research and activism in two very different locales: Duluth, Minnesota, and Seattle, Washington. In so doing we illustrate the complex and nuanced spatialities of heteronormative power and resistances to it.