Articulating the Construction of Urban Sexuality in the Wake of Neoliberal (Re)Development

Abstract

This thesis investigates the changes in lesbian experiences of urban spaces (re)produced through neoliberal development and subsequent dislocation and reterritorialization of LGBTQ communities. Critically reading scholarly canons of geography, feminist studies, and queer studies particular to studies of urban space and sexuality, I observe that this literature has inadequately theorized contemporary lesbian-queer subjectivities. Drawing on assemblage theory, I observe that lesbian subjectivities have been rearticulated in the wake of development, which has introduced new relationships of contingency and instability into the place-making of lesbian-queer urban subjects. Further, observing trends of post lesbian discourse, which betray anxieties about the disappearance of the lesbian identity amidst the erasure of space and substantial increase in the adoption of ‘queer’ as an identity term, I argue that ‘queer’ may present an ontological response to the insecurity of lesbian subjects in the neoliberal city, a shift which has exposed the fluidity, instability, and geographical-specificity of experiences of both space and identity.