Queer Theory

While “queer” as an analytical category emerged out of a poststructural critique of identity in the humanities, queer theory has been adopted by geographers as a tool to both understand and complicate topics as (seemingly) divergent as theorizations of identity and globalization. Although the earliest impact of queer theory in geography was most obvious in scholarship on sexuality and space, its influence can now be seen within a much greater variety of research.

In scholarship and in public fora, the word queer is commonly used both as a synonym for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (GLBTQ) identities, or to indicate a combination of these identities, and as a term to signal the instability, or refute the stability, of these very identity categories. As many suggest, ...