The place of transversal LGBTQ+ urban activisms

Abstract

This special issue on placing LGBTQ+ urban activisms seeks to affirm the plurality of LGBTQ+ activisms and expand the geographic lens to consider places that have been side-lined as sites of LGBTQ+ political ferment. In this article I reflect on the ways that the collection also gestures towards the importance of ‘connective’ LGBTQ+ urban activisms, complicating existing theorisation that has primarily focused on transnational relations. Approaching it through the particular space and time of London during the Covid-19 pandemic, I interpret the collection as a call to explore the knowledge that becomes available – and the praxis that is foregrounded – when we examine the connective dimensions of LGBTQ+ urban activisms. Bridging feminist, queer and urban studies, I conclude by arguing for the particular analytic lens that emerges when ‘place’ is brought into critical tension with ‘transversal politics’ as a way to think about both those connective LGBTQ+ urban activisms that already exist and those which are urgently needed.