French geography and geographies of sexualities: how do they match?

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French geography and geographies of sexualities: how do they match? A critical review of the Anglo-American geographies of sexualities

Geographies of sexualities highlight the spatial dimension of sexuality as a new object of study. They also focus on concepts, approaches and methodologies that are developed within the discipline. Up to recently, those works have been overlooked by French geography. This article presents itself as a critical review of the Anglo-American geographies of sexualities, whose aim is to enlighten the different phases and transformations it went through. The emphasis is on the multiple influences that had contributed, since the cultural turn, to the creation of this field of study. Three periods are identified: 1) geography of homosexuality, which enters the discipline in the 1980’s and focuses on gay relationship to the city in North America; 2) geography of women, which was strongly influenced by feminist movements and which has greatly enriched epistemologies in geography; 3) queer orientation in geography, seen as a critical orientation within the field. The goal of this paper is to question the possible links between these geographies of sexualities and the ongoing works produced in French geography.

Keywords:

  • geographie of sexualities
  • space
  • gender
  • queer theory
  • feminism
  • critical geography

Authors

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Publication information

Editors:

Charlotte Prieur, Louis Dupont

Publisher:

Géographie et cultures 83 | 2012 «Les espaces des masculinités», pp. 117-138

Languages:

French

City:

Paris

Year:

2012

Research labels:

Sexuality
Sexual orientation
Gender identities
Space(s)

Subjects:

Geography

Genres:

Article