What Kind of Field is ‘Law, Gender and Sexuality’? Achievements, Concerns and Possible Futures

Abstract

Reflecting upon a rather different moment in sexual politics (the 1970s) in a very different context (the Castro district in San Francisco, California), Castells and Murphy (1982) and Castells (1983) offer an insight, that for me, has particular resonance for a reflection on the achievements of the AHRC Centre for Law, Gender and Sexuality and on the significance of a field of scholarship in that area. Spatial concentration, they suggest, can play a significant role in the advancement of social justice. CentreLGS is a spatial and intellectual concentration that is not only dedicated to, but has also made a distinctive contribution towards, promoting an agenda of social justice. One of its key effects and crowning achievements is the generation of a distinctive location, physical and virtual, as well as an intellectual place within the academy for work on LGS. It provides a home for this work. I use the word ‘home’ to capture some important characteristics and qualities of CentreLGS as a spatial and intellectual formation. ‘Home’ is a spatial metaphor particularly associated with the experience of belonging (of ontological security). In its academic context, to be at home in the academy is to be located and to be in a location that enables the subject to identify with and to be identified, to be nurtured, to be fashioned. It gives the subject a visibility, a credibility, legitimacy and authority. One of the most immediate, important and seductive qualities of home is experienced and expressed in feelings of comfort. As Beverley Skeggs and I noted in Sexuality and the politics of violence and safety (Moran and Skeggs 2004, ch. 6), the spatial and emotional politics of home and comfort are intimately associated with important and positive perceptions and experiences of self worth and strength: of ‘‘confidence’’, ‘‘pride’’ and ‘‘feeling good’’ about oneself and the intellectual endeavours being engaged in, the project of social justice being strived for. But various commentators and scholars have noted some other, more problematic and disturbing characteristics of home and, I would add, comfort. Home is a