Decentering Queer Globalization: Diffusion and the ‘Global Gay’

Abstract

Queer geographers have been surprisingly slow to engage with the global turn that has existed for some time in queer studies outside the discipline. This is beginning to change but the range of sites addressed is limited largely to Euro-American ones. This paper considers the ways in which queer geographers might contribute to already-existing debates over the relationship between the ‘West’ and the ‘non-West’ in global queer studies. The paper departs from Larry Knopp and Michael Brown's “Queer diffusions”, a paper that appeared in a special issue of Society and Space (2003, 21 461–477). Though they limit themselves to the national scale of the United States, their argument that we should destigmatize places and identities cast as ‘backward’ has obvious relevance at the global scale. Its consistencies and inconsistencies with various strands of argument within the global queer-studies literature reveal that geographers might also learn from the spatial nuance developed in these debates. Specifically, this literature review concludes that we must also destigmatize those places and identities that are cast as ‘forward’ if queer globalization is to truly be decentered.