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Scholarship@Western > TOTEM > Vol. 20 (2012) > Iss. 1

 

Article Title

Taking New Directions: How Rural Queerness Provides Unique Insights into Place, Class, and Visibility

Abstract

In this paper I demonstrate how an attention to rural queerness offers a beneficial and necessary opportunity to examine queer subjectivies through the lens of space, place, and class. I highlight how individuals' claims to queerness can actually be embeddd within identifications with class and place. I demonstrate how identifications with place are illustrative of a broader coneption of rurality, an often-ignored yet immensely pervasive thread of identity, which, governed by familiarity, familial affiliation, and community participation, can actually provide rural queer individuals with a means of both acceptance and queer expression alternative to dominant models. I illustrate how rurality is not only absent from hegemonic urban conceptualizations of queer visibility, but is actually incompatible with the basic tenets of mainstream urban queer visibility politics. Rurality thus provides a compelling vehicle of critique and alternative envisioning for contemporary queer politics and subjectivities.

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