Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
pre-confi gured within the spatial imaginaries of the closet/ghetto, public/private and hetero-
sexual/homosexual binaries. The next section concentrates on post-structuralist feminist
frameworks that offered opportunities to rethink the relationship between spatially, sexuality
and tourism.
Geographers have made good use of feminist critical social theory on embodiment to
trouble the fl awless confi guration between lesbian and gay tourists and gay ghettos as 'home-
lands'. J. Butler's (1990, 1993) concept of 'the performative' is extremely important. According
to J. Butler (1990), doing sexuality or gender involves the repetition of acts regulated by
dominant discourses confi gured by the straight/gay binary. Butler famously draws upon the
exaggerated femininities performed by drag queens to illustrate how performative attributes
of gender are naturalised within the regime of heterosexuality. Butler offers an understanding
of the process of identity formation which is plural, unstable and regulatory.
Many geographers were attracted to Butler's defi nition of 'gender as performative' to
rethink the relationship between subjectivity and space (Bell
et al.
, 1994; Knopp, 1995;
Probyn, 1995). For example, Nelson (1999) reworked Butler's ideas in terms of the 'spatiality
of performativity', arguing that subjects must not be reduced to unrefl exive performers of
dominant discourses because this abstracts the subject from time and space. Instead, she theo-
rised subjectivities as 'an iterative process produced through a
recursive
relationship between
power/discourse and critically refl exive, geographically embedded subjects' (1999: 341,
empha sis i n or ig i na l). Theor isi ng subject s a s capable of agenc y - a lthoug h en meshed i n power/
discourse relations - provides an opportunity to explore the constitutive power of discourse
and the hows and whys of human subjects doing identity. This iterative process is directly
related to the situated-ness of their personal histories, intersubjective relationships, and to their
embeddedness in particular places. As Probyn (2003: 298) eloquently argues, subjectivity and
space are co-constituted: 'In space, we orient ourselves and are oriented.' Tourism geographies
have benefi ted from this intersection between queer and feminist perspectives through
directing attention to how sexualities are not only shaped by space, but at the same time doing
sexuality helps to shape space. Sexualities are not only changeable, but they are the outcome
of an iterative spatial process. In this way, tourism geographies based on the binary division of
closet/ghetto and straight/gay is rejected and replaced with expressions of sexualities and
spatiality that are interconnected, fl uid, discontinuous and improvisational.
Tourism research deploying queer perspectives from critical social theory on embodiment
was initiated in the 2000s. The initial research by Johnston (2001: 181) drew on empirical
materials from the HERO Parade (Aotearoa/New Zealand's biggest gay pride parade) and
the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade. Johnston offered an embodied account of
tourism geographies. Her work revealed the complexities of subjectivities in tourism research.
She demonstrated that, rather than conceptualising straight and gay, tourist and host, as
distinct and separate entities, these bodies became (re)sexualised through these touristic
events. For some bodies, attending the gay pride parade was a mechanism to normalise and
assert heterosexuality by constructing homosexuals as deviant. For others, the parade offered
possibilities to celebrate through encounters that allow bodies to become sexualised as lesbian,
gay, trans or bisexual. Her focus on gendered/sexed and sexualised embodiment at gay pride
parades foregrounds subjectivity as always spatial, fractured and multiple.
Browne (2007, 2009, 2010), Waitt (2003, 2005, 2006) and Waitt and Gorman-Murray
(2008) built upon and extended the application of critical social theory on embodiment in
tourism geographies through studies of lesbian and gay festivals. Taken together, this work
demonstrates the importance of tourism in reinforcing and rupturing norms surrounding
sexualities. Browne (2007: 82) coined the term 'a party with politics' to underscore that
