De-Centering Sexualities

311 Pages·1999·1.881 MB·English

by  Richard Phillips (editor), David Shuttleton (editor), Diane Watt (editor)

DE-CENTRING SEXUALITIES
An enormous amount of literature exists which explores and discusses sexuality in
urban and ‘colonized’ spaces, but there is little which documents these issues in the
marginal or ‘in-between’ places. These places have great significance with respect to
representations and politics of sexuality, for it is in these spaces that hegemonic
sexualities may be least stable.
De-centring Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis is an
exploration of material and metaphysical geographies of sexualities outside of the
urban arena. The ‘marginal’ sexualities are furthest from the movements that seek to
liberate them, and sexual subjects are least stable in these marginal regions.
The book explores these issues in four parts: Non-metropolitan Sexualities;
Beyond the Metropolis; Deconstructing Metropolitan Models; and Devolving
Sexualities. The strong team of contributors from a range of different fields
(including cultural studies, literature and history), investigate themes ranging from
religion, to hierarchies of power, constructions of rural sexualities, politics of
pastoral representation and sexual persecution.
CRITICAL GEOGRAPHIES
Edited by Tracey Skelton, Lecturer in International Studies, Nottingham Trent
University,
and Gill Valentine, Professor of Geography, The University of Sheffield.
This series offers cutting-edge research organised into four themes of concepts,
scale, transformations and work. It is aimed at upper-level undergraduates, research
students and academics, and will facilitate inter-disciplinary engagement between
geography and other social sciences. It provides a forum for the innovative and
vibrant debates which span the broad spectrum of this discipline.
1. MIND AND BODY SPACES
Geographies of illness, impairment and disability
Edited by Ruth Butler and Hester Parr
2. EMBODIED GEOGRAPHIES
Spaces, bodies and rites of passage
Edited by Elizabeth Kenworthy Teather
3. LEISURE/TOURISM GEOGRAPHIES
Practices and geographical knowledge
Edited by David Crouch
4. CLUBBING
Dancing, Ecstasy, Vitality
Ben Malbon
5. ENTANGLEMENTS OF POWER
Geographies of domination/resistance
Edited by Joanne Sharp, Paul Routledge, Chris Philo and Ronan Paddison
6. DE-CENTRING SEXUALITIES
Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis
Edited by Richard Phillips, Diane Watt and David Shuttleton
7. GEOPOLITICAL TRADITIONS
Critical Histories of a Century of Political Thought
Edited by Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson
8. CHILDREN’S GEOGRAPHIES
Playing, Living, Learning
Edited by Sarah L Holloway and Gill Valentine
9. THINKING SPACE
Edited by Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift
10. ANIMAL SPACES, BEASTLY PLACES
New Geographies of Human–Animal Relations
Edited by Chris Philo ad Chris Wilbert
iii
DE-CENTRING
SEXUALITIES
Politics and representations beyond the
metropolis
Edited by Richard Phillips,
Diane Watt and
David Shuttleton
London and New York
First published 2000
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2000 Richard Phillips, Diane Watt and David Shuttleton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-98063-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-19465-2 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-19466-0 (pbk)
CONTENTS
Notes on contributors viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction 1
RICHARD PHIILLIPS AND DIANE WATT
PART I Non-metropolitan sexualities 17
1 The production of gay and the return of power 19
ALAN SINFIELD
2 Marginality on the tropic 35
DENNIS ALTMAN
3 Region, religion and sexuality: pilgrim through this barren 47
land
KATE CHEDGZOY
4 Margins of the city: towards a dialectic of suburban desire 63
BARRY LANGFORD
PART II Beyond the metropolis 79
5 Eroticizing the rural 81
DAVID BELL
6 Imagined geographies and sexuality politics: the city, the 101
country and the age of consent
RICHARD PHILLIPS
7 The queer politics of gay pastoral 123
DAVID SHUTTLETON
8 Skirting the margins: Anne Lister, self-representation and 145
lesbian identity in early nineteenth-century Yorkshire
ANIRA ROWANCHILD
PART III Deconstructing metropolitan models 159
9 Marginalization and resistance: lesbians in Mexico 161
SUE WILLMAN
vii
10 Remapping same-sex desire: queer writing and culture in the 179
American heartland
WILLIAM J.SPURLIN
11 Getting your kicks on Route 66!: stories of gay and lesbian 195
life in rural America, c. 1950–1970s
ANGELIA R.WILSON
12 Mapping decolonization of male homoerotic space in 213
Pacific Canada
GORDON BRENT INGRAM
PART IV Devolving sexualities 235
13 Devolutionary desires 237
LYNNE PEARCE
14 On the borders of allegiance: identity politics in Ulster 253
VINCENT QUINN
15 Transgression in Glasgow: a poet coming to terms 273
EDWIN MORGAN
Author index 287
Subject index 293
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Dennis Altman is senior lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne. His many
books include The Homosexualisation of America (l982), AIDS and the New
Puritanism (1986), Homosexual Oppression and Liberation (1971) and Defying
Gravity (1996).
David Bell is senior lecturer in cultural studies at Staffordshire University. His
publications include Mapping Desire (1995) and Consuming Geographies (1997)
(both co-edited). He is also the co-author of The Sexual Citizen (2000) and co-
editor of a Cybercultures Reader (2000).
Kate Chedgzoy is senior lecturer in English at the University of Warwick. She is
the co-editor of a number of books about gender and sexuality in early modern
culture, and the author of Shakespeare’s Queer Children: Sexual Politics and
Contemporary Culture (1996).
Gordon Brent Ingram is a queer activist and environmental designer, who has
made his home outside of Vancouver, San Francisco and Rome. He is the editor of
Queers in Space: Communities/ Public Places/ Sites of Resistance (1997), and an
associate lecturer at the University of British Columbia.
Barry Langford is lecturer in Film and Television Studies in the Department of
Media and Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London. He has published on
film and the Holocaust, and is currently writing a book on media, identity and
urban space.
Edwin Morgan is an internationally acclaimed Scottish poet. His recent
publications include Collected Poems (1990), Sweeping out the Dark (1994),
Collected Translations (1996) and Virtual and Other Realities (1997).
Lynne Pearce is senior lecturer in English at Lancaster University. She has
published extensively on women’s writing and feminist theory, most recently in
Devolving Identities: Feminist Readings in Nation, Class and Region (1999).
Richard Phillips lectures in Geography at Salford University. His publications
include Mapping Men and Empire: A Geography of Adventure (1997). He is
currently writing a book about the cultural politics of decolonization.
Vincent Quinn lectures in English at the University of Sussex. His publications
include Luxurious Sexualities (1997), an edition of Textual Practice which he co-
ix
edited, and numerous essays in the fields of literary criticism and gay and lesbian
studies.
Anira Rowanchild is a tutor in Literature at the Open University, and a long-
time activist in lesbian and feminist politics in the border counties of England
and Wales.
David Shuttleton lectures in English and Film at the University of Wales,
Aberystwyth. He has published on eighteenth-century and modern literature, and
is the author of Queer Pastoral: Nature, Homosexuality and Modernity
(forthcoming).
Alan Sinfield is Professor of English at Sussex University. His publications include
The Wilde Century (1994), Cultural Politics/Queer Reading, Literature, Politics and
Culture in Post-war Britain, and Gay and After (1998).
William J.Spurlin is based at Columbia University, New York. His publications
include Reclaiming the Heartland: Lesbian and Gay Voices from the Midwest
(1996).
Diane Watt is senior lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
She has published an edited collection and a book, both about women’s writing
and history. She has also written a number of articles about gender and sexuality,
and recently contributed to Queerly Phrased: Language, Gender and Sexuality
(1997).
Sue Willman is a legal practitioner in London, specializing in equality and
human rights cases. She is also a freelance journalist, whose essays on travel and
sexuality have appeared in Diva and numerous other publications.
Angelia R.Wilson is the author of Below the Belt: Sexuality, Religion and the
American South (forthcoming), the editor of A Simple Matter of Justice? (1994)
and the co-editor with Joseph Bristow of Activating Theory. She is senior lecturer
in the School of Social Policy at the University of Manchester.