Mapping the Queer Affective Contours of the City: Reimagining Care and Community in Glasgow, Scotland

Keywords: Queer geographies, critical cartography, affect, care, mapping, non-representational theory, walking, performativity
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Tuesday
Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 08:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 09:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 64

Abstract

Geography’s interest in affect challenges the singular narrative of the neoliberal city and acknowledges the multiplicitous ways in which sociomaterial urban geographies are lived and felt. In the field of critical cartography, affective approaches to mapping have allowed us to ‘better understand our emotional engagements with place’ (Caquard & Griffin, 2019). Given that contemporary cartographic forms of knowledge have typically failed to account for affect in their spatial renderings, recent work which explores the affective and emotional facets of maps, mapping, and map-use (Pánek, 2019; Peterle, 2018; Rossetto, 2019; Boontharm, 2019) has shown that affect and cartography are not incommensurable but in fact closely intertwined. Making space for affect can shift cartography from a representational mode to a hopeful, expressive orientation and practice.

How, then, might affective cartographic practices be used to reimagine geographies of care in the neoliberal city? This paper conceives a performative, more-than-representational mapping praxis for exploring the queer ‘affective contours’ (Truman & Springgay, 2019) of urban space. This discussion will respond to early observations from my fieldwork, which involves a creative practice of walking-with and mapping-with queer participants in Glasgow, Scotland. These participant-led walks-as-maps explore how ‘queer orientations’ (Ahmed, 2006) produce queer space, and how queer space and place are performed and experienced through affective encounters. As many spaces of care and community closed due to COVID-19 restrictions, this paper will consider the uses of affective mapping for imagining alternative ways of being, belonging, and caring in the neoliberal city in the wake of the pandemic.