Queering the City: Introduction
Résumé
To ask what produces social relationships in urban space today, and how social relationships produce space and place, is to affirm that the connection between society and space is a two-way street. If space is the product of social relations, then conversely space—according to Henri Lefebvre’s triad of “lived, conceived and perceived space”—far from being the passive receptacle of social forces, actually structures and contributes to the reproduction of social relations, in addition to challenging them. This publication questions the relationship between gender, sex, race, and space. In an urban space marked by prescribed social relationships, is it possible to resist and “queer” the city? If we understand “queering” as Kath Browne does in “Challenging Queer Geographies” as “operating beyond powers and controls that enforce normativity” (Browne 886), then “queering the city” implies redrawing, reconceptualizing, rethinking, and remapping to remake bodies, spaces, and geographies. As presented by the August 2023 issue of Social Inclusion edited by Karine Duplan, Monica Battaglini, Milena Chimenti, and Marylène Lieber, inclusivity in urban spaces is a public policy issue that questions the very foundations of freedom and anonymity of the urban spaces we live in.