COMMENTARIES ON SPECIAL ISSUE

Mapping the Patterns of

Particularities: Queering the
Geographies of Identities
Francisco Valdes
School of Law, University of Miami, Miami, FL, US;
bgarrido@law.miami.edu

The works that comprise this timely collection meet at the intersections of space and identity and of substance and method. As a set,
the preceding works interrupt dominant perceptions and complacent
discourses of space that overlook how various axes of identity help to
constructfor better and worsethose spaces, as well as differential
human experiences of space. These works similarly rise to the challenge of traditional skeptics: these works show how the methods of
critical and postmodern scholarship can and do affect the substance
the Knowledgethus produced in the name of scholarly inquiry. But
beyond these accomplishments, this collection raises a question that
goes to very heart of queer studies and praxis: what is, or should be,
queer positionality vis--vis Euroheteropatriarchy and its neocolonial
spread in this new millennium via dominant forms of contemporary
globalization.
By Euroheteropatriarchy, I mean a particular version of
heteropatriarchya Eurocentric version, which in fact is the one in
place in the Americas and other sites of European colonization. This
version of heteropatriarchy consists of a combination of supremacist
ideologies that formed in Europeparticularly its northwestern
environsand was inflicted on the world via European conquest and
commercialism. This combination favors the white European male
who is both heterosexual and masculine. It favors European-identified
culturescustoms, languages, religions (Valdes 1995, 1996). It
combines, in sum, the racism, nativism, androsexism, heterosexism
and cultural chauvinism of those regions, which in the centuries of
colonialism were exported globally and, more recently, are being
reinforced through the social, economic, cultural, legal, and political
processes of corporate globalization.
2002 Editorial Board of Antipode.
Published by Blackwell Publishing, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA

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I thus use Euroheteropatriarchy to denote a more geographically

and culturally specific variant on heteropatriarchythe term used
in many of the preceding works to signify both the formations and
ideologies that I describe as Euroheteropatriarchy, and that form the
chief macrostructure of subordination to which the authors address
their individual works here. And by globalization I meanas the
above authors appear likewise to meanthe current neocolonial forms
of corporate international control that are driven, as was colonialism,
by the greed of those historically privileged by imperialism and by their
ongoing exploitation of the Othered. Each of the preceding works
poses the same fundamental challenge to queer scholars and communities (albeit from a different perspective): how do we anchor our
work, lives, interrelations, and aspirations to principles and values that
will not simply recycle the sociosexual and socioeconomic hierarchies
that afflict the larger societies within which we are situatedand
against which we rail?
This salutary challenge is not limited on the face of this collection
to geographers, and it should be thus: this challenge, in fact, currently
confronts not only geographers but also scholars from other disciplines,
as well as queer individuals and outgroup communities looking for
ethical anchors to a postsubordination social reality. Indeed, the questions raised and issues explored above have percolated in recent times
and similar ways within the world of the law and legal scholarship
more precisely, within the fields of outsider jurisprudence pioneered
chiefly by feminist, critical race, LatCrit, and allied critical legal
scholarsor OutCrits (Valdes 1999).
In my view, this OutCrit denomination and position is an effort to
conceptualize and operationalize the social-justice analyses and struggles
of varied and overlapping yet different subordinated groups in an
interconnective way. By OutCrit I thus mean (at least initially) those
scholars who identify and align themselves with outgroups in this
country, as well as globally. But by OutCrit, I mean additionally
an embrace of multidimensional approaches, as described further
below, to all antisubordination theory and praxis, including specific
projects that might be focused principally on antiracist, antisexist, and
antihomophobic objectives. I mean a personal and proactive, as well
as intellectual and collective, embrace of the historic and unfinished
struggles against the interlocking legacies of white, Anglo, male, and
straight supremacies. In the converse, I mean a principled, concurrent, and actual rejection of narrow and regressive nationalisms, or
essentialisms, based unidimensionally on class, race, ethnicity, gender,
sexual orientation, or other single-axis categories of affinity or
identification.
Fundamentally, then, OutCrit signifies a position of multidimensional
critique of and struggle against the specific kinds of racist, nativist,

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sexist, and homophobic ideologies and elites that combine to produce

and perpetuate Euroheteropatriarchy. OutCrit positionality, in short,
is framed around the need to confront in personal, collective, and
coordinated ways the mutually reinforcing tenets and effects of the
sociopolitical forces that currently operate both domestically and
internationally under Euroheteropatriarchy (Valdes 2000a). Among
the ranks of OutCrits, therefore, effectively are the scholars who have
authored the works in this issue. And it is from this perspectivethe
OutCrit subject positionthat I approach this collection and compose these comments, and that I embrace the challenges thus posed.
In at least one key sense, this collection thereby (and thankfully)
ratchets up the leveland the challengesof substantive projects
for all queer scholars and activists beyond the constricting basics of
modern (as opposed to postmodern) identity politics. This collection
does not pause to ask if queer positionality should be devoted to or
shaped by substantive principles and values that rise aboveand
thereby will not simply recyclethe traditional dogmas and oppressive
practices of Euroheteropatriarchy, including not only its heterosexism
but also its androsexism, its cultural imperialism, and its racial-ethnic
politics of supremacy. This collection makes clear these authors joint
conviction: queer positionalityboth as a field of study and as a diverse
collection of individuals, groups, and communitiesmust be committed
to liberational rather than traditional ideals, processes, and goals.
And, as a set, the authors make a compelling case for this foundational
commitment as the fountainhead of queer studies concrete relevance
to queer lives among and across multiply diverse communities.
In so doing, the authors of the preceding works collectively illustrate
and perform the distinction between gay (or lesbian or bisexual
or trans/bi-gendered) forms of identity and queer positionality.
The two are not, of course, necessarily separate, but neither are they
one and the same per se. Generally speaking, the former signifies
categories comprising sex, gender, and sexual orientation, while the
latter represents a political category. The former signifies members of
various sexual minorities, whereas the latter signifies an overlapping
but distinct category, as announced in a Queer Nation flyer of the late
1980s: Being queer means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites, and our
own self-hatred. Thus, the distinction between lesbian and gay or
queer is that the former at times amount to essentialized, single-axis
identities, while the latter signifiesand constantly searches fora
postmodern political identification (Valdes 1995:346356).
Of course, this latter positionthe queer positionapparently is
occupied at the present mostly by members of sexual minorities. This
is a consequence of historically contingent circumstances. As with
other liberation movements, including those based on race/ethnicity

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and sex/gender, the initial stirrings of activist resistance to particular

forms of oppression emanate from those groups that most bear the
brunt of a particular prejudice; people of color thus led antiracist
work, women thus led antisexist work, and sexual minorities thus
far have led antiheterosexist work (Valdes 1997:13131328). But as
the previous works in this volume make perfectly clear, not all gay/
etc-identified persons or groups would self-identifyor be identified
by othersas queer in the substantive sense declared by Queer
Nation. And it is precisely to this disjuncture between gay and
queer that this collection is addressed.
The critiques of queer (gay?) white patriarchy in this collection
squarely thematize this point: on what basis, they effectively ask, can
white patriarchy exist within queer contexts (see Nast this issue)?
How can sexual minorities choose to replicate the evils of Euroheteropatriarchy through and in our supposedly liberational movements and
projects? In effect, these essays lay down a compelling point that
demands resolution before an ethical coherence of queer positionality
can take place: the perpetuation of, claim to, and enjoyment of male
privilege, class privilege, and/or white privilege within sexual-minority
gay, lesbian, and so oncontexts brings into serious question whether
those contexts are also queer or liberational. Or are they, instead,
simply an extension of the dominant mainstream practices to
selectively accommodate the discomforts of the already most
structurally privileged members of multiply diverse sexual-minority
communities around the world?
The critiques unfolded above also point to another feature integral
to the formation of a substantively queered subject position: the
centrality of criticality to queer or queered perspectivity. These works
do not only train critical attention on the deeds and misdeeds
of majoritarian or mainstream forces. They also train self-critical
attention on the deeds and misdeeds of queer (or gay) forces. Along
with the description quoted earlier, these works and their critiques
display why queer positionality is, of necessity, a critical and selfcritical stance: by definition, queer positionality stands in opposition
to dominant ways of thinking, doing, and being. It is a perspective that
seeks, through critique and self-critique, to devise efficaciousviable,
ethical, reliableescapes from the legacies of past practices and also
from their current and future perpetuation through present practices.
Unlike gay positionality, queerdom cannot blend in a gingerly way
into the Euroheteropatriarchal landscapes we have inherited from
historical arrogations of power and privilege, nor can it be squared
with contemporary, ongoing injustices that stem directly or indirectly
from those arrogations.
The kind of queer coherence that this collection thereby seems
to envision and beckon is not based on any one or more axis of

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identitywhether the axis is sexual orientation, race, gender, class,

or any other particular social constructbut rather on a mutual and
authentic commitment to antisubordination principles and postsubordination aspirations; a mutual and authentic commitment to critical
and self-critical applications of egalitarian principles of intra- and
intergroup liberation. In this way, this collection affirmatively challenges the essentialist and essentializing presumptions or narratives
that depict multiply diverse sexual minorities as cohered by sexual
orientation concerns, interests, or issues, regardless of concurrent
axes of identity or identification and of their sociocultural and
sociopolitical implications for multiply diverse sexual minorities. This
collectionrightfully, in my viewrejects essentialist approaches
to queer positionality and studies that, in practice, perpetuate Euroheteropatriarchy generally and that, more specifically, gives rise to
a queeroddformation or prospect: a white patriarchy that, by
definition, promotes both white supremacy and male privilege but
that, in embarrassing and self-defeating self-contradiction, is also
imagined and denominated as somehow queer or queered.
This threshold questionand choiceof self-signification is more
than an idle act of labeling. The act of naming is an act of poweran
act of empowerment or disempowerment, as the case may be. At this
historical juncture of emergent queer studies in geography and
other disciplines, the substantive question entailed in the act of selfdenomination is: what do we stand for, and why should anyone else
stand with us? Does queer positionality stand only for sexual
liberation? What is or should be included under the rubric of the
sexual under this formulation? Can the liberation of the sexual be
accomplished without reference to class, race, gender? If not, on what
basis can this cramped form of sexual liberation be offered to those
among us who simultaneously are members both of sexual and of
ethnic, racial, religious, and/or other kinds of traditionally subordinated
groups? Finally, and as a practical matter, why should persons and
groups implicated in the liberation of ourselves from all forms of
subordination lend their time, energy, creativity, and lives to cramped
outlines of a sexually liberated future that foreseeablyif not
intentionallywill benefit only a few, and arguably those among us
who seemingly need help (or more benefits) least?
This collection thus argues effectively for twin guideposts to frame
and ground the development of queer studies both in geography and
beyond: antiessentialsm and antisubordination. Essentialism and
antiessentialism are key concepts in critical studies, yet both terms
mean different things in different contexts. Generally, essentialism
is a descriptor applied to claims that a particular perspective reflects
the common experiences and interests of a broader group, as when
working-class men purport to define the class interests of workers

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(Iglesias 1993), or when white Anglo, middle-class, heterosexual women

purport to define the interests of all women without acknowledging
intragroup differences of position and perspective (Harris 1990), or
when straight women generally fail to take into account the condition
of lesbians in feminist liberational projects (Cain 19891990), or when
LatCrit scholars homogenize all Latinas/os as Hispanics (Valdes
2000b), and certainly when sexual-minority scholars write as if all
sexual minorities are white, well-to-do, and male (Hutchinson 1997).
Indeed, essentialist categories are routinely invoked precisely in order
to suppress attention to intragroup differences and thereby to
consolidate a groups agenda primarily around the preferences of the
groups internal elites. By contrast, antiessentialist theory seeks to
reveal intragroup differences precisely in order to expose relations of
subordination and domination that may exist within and among the
members of any particular grouping and thereby to help delineate
expansive projects of liberation that are egalitarian, that are designed
to root out subordination within as well as between groups.
Though antiessentialist theory at times has been attacked for
fragmenting or balkanizing outgroup solidarities and undermining
more universal struggles for progressive social transformation,
antiessentialist theorizing seeks rather to ground collective solidarity
on substantive inter- and intragroup justice, rather than in the unstable or superficial coincidence of a particular form or axis of identity
or identity-based predilections. In other words, antiessentialism serves
antisubordinationthe pursuit of liberation and transformation for
those at the bottom from the interlocking structures and systems of
oppression or subordination around which societies are organized
(Iglesias and Valdes 1998:513521; Matsuda 1989:2324). These two
concepts must be put to work in tandem.
The antiessentialist foundations of queer and other outsider
projects of liberation, if taken seriously, demand that queers never
lose sight of the ultimate aim and purpose of our work: the promotion
of antisubordination transformation as a material bottom line.
Antiessentialist approaches to queer studies therefore necessarily
by definitionare closely related to antisubordination principles,
because antiessentialism provides a key means of securing discursive
spaces for voices and interests that mainstreamed preferences and
projects tend to overlook or marginalize, enabling outgroups to conceive, articulate, and organize antisubordination projects that respond
directly to intra- as well as intergroup needs, relations, and differences.
Indeed, antisubordination purpose isand must bethe substantive
anchor for queering antiessentialism in sexual-minority venues:
antisubordination principles and analysis, applied in critical and
self-critical ways, provide the substantive limits for and directions of
antiessentialism in the group project of queer liberation. Thus,

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antiessentialism is no end unto itself; its social and liberational utility

is defined in substantive relation to a contextualized antisubordination
purpose. In queer and similar genres of critical studies, antisubordination
purpose ideally always contextualizes and informs antiessentialism
(Iglesias and Valdes 2001).
But this collection also makes plain that these twin guideposts must
not function only to guide queer theorizing. This collection makes
plain that, yes, queer studies must be anchored to principles and values
that resist the transplantation of Euroheteropatriarchy into emergent
sexual-minority domains, but it also makes equally clear that principled queer theorizing must be matched by principled social action in
myriad spaces and settings. Deeds must match words. Praxis must
match theory. We must do that which we say or write. Analysis without
action erodes social relevance. And this alignment of queer studies
and practices applies not only externally to the world at large, but also
to ourselves as individuals or groups identified with sexual minorities
and other traditionally subordinated peoples.
Indeed, this collection pointedly questions how our personal, or local,
practices help to constitute and continue dominant global patterns of
social injustice. As these works demonstrate quite vividly, the local
particularities that we personally help to createperhaps influenced
by increasingly globalized forcesin turn help to form the transnational
patterns of oppression to which queer positionality is supposedly
opposed. To avoid this self-contradicting complicity, this collection in
effect calls not only for self-reflection but also for self-criticality in
both the theory and the practice of queer positionality. As a set, the
preceding works make plain that self-criticality is a requisite to ethical
practice, to ensuring that we practice amongst ourselves what we preach
for society as a whole. Critical praxis, in other words, must be turned
inward as much as outward.
This bedrock point provides a substantive baseline to measure the
integrity of queer enterprise, and thus bears emphasis: the ethical
demands of queer praxis apply within gay and other sexual-minority
spaces and projects as well as throughout the larger society, and
even more specificallywithin the texts that we produce as well as the
professional spaces that we inhabit and the social networks in which
we participate. This collection thus shows how and why the imperatives and challenges of queer praxis apply to ourselves, personally
and professionallythat is, to our surrender of the privileges that
Euroheteropatriarchy bestows on us individually as queers and,
moreover, at the expense of Others. And this demand to disgorge
stands whether the privileges we reap under Euroheteropatriarchy are
based on class, sex/gender, race/ethnicity, or other axes of identity,
and whether we reap its benefits professionally, socially, culturally,
and/or materially. In short, the theory must be matched by the practice

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in critical and self-critical ways, and both must be anchored to the

principles of egalitarian intra- and intergroup liberation: antiessentialism and antisubordination.
These powerful threshold points are collectively articulated in the
preceding works through at least three principal lenses or lines of
substantive critical inquiry. The first of these is the apparent pursuit
of rapacious habits or appetites associated with consumerism and
capitalism within sexual-minority or queer contexts and the social
consequences of this embrace both internally (within sexualminority communities or spaces) as well as externally (among the
larger society) (see Anonymous this issue; Blum this issue; Nast
this issue; Puar this issue). The second is the intersection of sexual
orientation with other axes of identityespecially class, sex/gender,
and race/ethnicityin the formation of queer discourses or sexualminority communities (see Anonymous this issue; Nast this issue;
Puar this issue). The third is the intertwining of the local and global in
sexual-minority and queer spaces, which is being intensified via
corporate forms of globalization, and the spread of supremacist
identity ideologies favoring the well-to-do white male into sexualminority or queer spaces as a result of this glocality (Anonymous
this issue; Bacchetta this issue; Blum this issue; Nast this issue;
Papadopoulos this issue; Puar this issue). These three areas of inquiry
overlap considerably, as the essays in this issue amply illustrate:
everywhere and at all times they are interactive, mutually reinforcing
examples of Euroheteropatriarchys operationperhaps entrenchment
in the social, intellectual, and political processes of queer
liberation in different times and places.
For example, Blums critique of self-gratification in the context of
sexual revolution and liberation covers and connects each of these
areas of inquiry, as does Nasts discussion of this project both in her
introduction to the issue and in her contribution deconstructing the
international parameters of queer patriarchy and racisms. Both
authors engage all three areas of inquiry in their analyses of sexual
orientation and its interaction with gender, class and other axes of
identity in sexual minority lives, relations and contexts. Anonymouss
essay on the trafficking of wombs among, in this instance, an affluent
gay male couple and a heterosexual woman of Jewish ancestry,
poignantly testifies to the salience of these three areas of study in contemporary everyday life, as her discussion unfolds how socioeconomic
privilege, gender position, religious identity and family-construction
interact to maintain and recycle hierarchies drawn from the ideologies
and histories of Euroheteropatriarchy. Puars discussion of the norms
and practices that define todays queer tourism similarly spans these
three areas or lines of inquiry, while Bacchettas account of
transnational queerdom in the context of identity politics in Delhi

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graphically brings them together to show their real-life convergence

and consequences. Both contributions illustrate how different axes
of identity, including again class, gender and race, interplay in sexual
minority settings within localities that are culturally different and
globally extended. Papadopouloss comparative discussion of Romeic
and Hellenic legacies in the articulation of (male) same-sex desire
in contemporary Greece likewise shows the interconnectedness of the
three lenses or lines of inquiry that, in tandem, create the binds that
tie these works together as a groundbreaking collection of what we
might describe as an inchoate, incipient kind of critical geography.
In this essay, Papadopoulos highlights one particular examplethe
modern Greek nation-stateto document how economics, identity
and globalization travel and interact across both time and space. The
multi-pronged interrogations of capitalism, identity and geography
that constitute this collection jointly help to map the multi-layered
patterns of power and privilege formed by the multiple particularities
of time and space. As a set, this collection points the way forward
in the cultivation of contemporary human knowledge via critical
scholarship not only in geography but in other disciplines as well.
One especially remarkable result of this three-pronged collective
inquiry is to expose how the particularities of far-flung and different
spaces and histories in fact form patterns without borders: how the
global is a patchwork of local particularities that, in turn, form the
patterns of oppression that envelope groups and individuals in everyday ways, and, concomitantly, how the globaland globalization itself
in turn structure contemporary social changes on the ground in local
places and spaces. This didactic realitythis glocalityrequires that
critical inquiry focus not only on local specifics or differences
among or within localities but also on how localized particularities
are situated within, and help to form, larger structures or systems
of subordinationand, moreover, on how each helps mutually to
co-construct the other. The mutually reinforcing interactivity of the
local and global explains why any analysis that limits itself exclusively
to one or the other is bound to be seriously lacking in nuanced and
enduring insight.
The bottom line with which we thus are left is the indispensability
to queer liberation of multidimensional analysis and principled praxis
(Hernandez-Truyol 1994; Hutchinson 1997; Valdes 1997, 1998). By
multidimensionality I mean the practice of interrogating social
conditions and spaces with an eye toward the many overlapping constructs and dynamics that converge on particular persons, groups,
settings, events, or issues. Building on preceding theoretical breakthroughs such as multiplicity, intersectionality, and antiessentialism,
multidimensionality denotes more of a qualitative shift in analytical
consciousness and discursive climate than a quantitative increase in the

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recognition of multiple identities and their intersections. Multidimensional analysis cannot be reduced to a mere recitation of the
multiple diversities that constitute (and oftentimes disrupt) sexual or
racial or ethnic categories; multidimensionality calls for a profound
and far-reaching recognition of the convergence of particularities
such as religion, geography, ability, class, sexuality, and other identity
fault lines that run through and help to configure and to interconnect
all communities. By multidimensional analysis I thus mean to evoke
(1) a scholarly mindset, (2) an analytical approach, and (3) a collective
or programmatic commitment to antisubordination discourse and action
without boundaries or bordersincluding not only the borders of
regions, cultures, and identities but also those of discipline and perspective. This collection, then, represents a splendid case study in the
benefits of critical and self-critical multidimensional analysis anchored
by antiessentialism and antisubordination.
This collection challenges the complacent norms of unidimensional
or essentializinganalyses within the particular discipline of geography. It displays how unidimensional approaches that essentialize the
spaces inhabited by sexual minorities fail to serve antisubordination
purpose except, perhaps, for a fewthe relatively privileged few
within any given place or minority. It incisively shows how and why
approaches to white supremacy, or to male supremacy, or to straight
supremacy as stand-alone or isolated forms of oppression promise
little, if any, chance of producing enduring social-justice change for
the multiply diverse groups and persons that are disempowered by
these various forms of supremacy and by their interlocking effects.
It illustrates both why unidimensional analyses fail to account for
the mutually reinforcing synergies that cross-support these and other
different forms of oppression and how essentialism serves no
substantive antisubordination purpose: this collection shows that unidimensional approaches to sexual minority politics and social reform
will produce skewed and limited improvement of sexual minority lives
in ways that favor and reinforce the dominance within sexual minorities
of those most proximate to Euroheteropatriarchal preferences. At best,
as this collection shows, unidimensional theories and interventions
produce only dents in vast and complex fields of interconnected sociolegal systems that artificially structure and maintain hierarchy among
and across human spaces and identities. Only through multidimensional analysis and praxis, then, can antisubordination theorists
and activists design effective and efficient strategies of resistance and
reformstrategies that can have a positive social effect precisely because
they are designed to mirror and combat the nature and dynamics of
interlocking structures of subordination
As this collection also illustrates, to achieve and sustain this multidimensional kind and level of analysis and practice requires creative

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methodologiesthe ways and means of interrogating and breaking

through master narratives to unveil hidden histories and legacies. In
particular, this collection ably demonstrates the value of two
approaches or techniques that are central to social-justice struggles:
interdisciplinarity and narrativity. In fact, each one of the preceding
essays employs both, albeit to different degrees and in varied ways.
This collection shows that in geography, as in other disciplines
and endeavors, interdisciplinarity and narrativity are sources of antisubordination insight, tools of critical and self-critical analysis that,
along with other such tools, can help us excavate marginalized sources
of knowledge production to open avenues of thinking outside of mainstream boxes. As this collection shows, these two tools of postmodern
scholarship can help to pierce entrenched forms of essentialism that
have a grip on the academic imagination, and to capture otherwise
occluded revelations. As the above works indicate, these tools, if used
critically and self-critically in both queer theory and praxis, can
advance egalitarian and expansive forms of sexual liberation among
sexual-minority lives and hopesforms of liberation that, in fact, free
multiply diverse sexual minorities from the tyrannies of Euroheteropatriarchy and their increasing worldwide hegemony via prevalent
forms of corporate globalization.
This collection leaves us with an important reminder of many
truths and challenges facing queered liberation projects, both in
terms of identity and space and in terms of substance and method.
As a whole, these essays confirm that queerness and Euroheteropatriarchy are mutually exclusive options for the development and
articulation of cultures and values among and between sexual
minorities, as well as beyond them. This incompatibility drives the
pressing need for a substantively queered praxis among and
between queered sexual minoritiesas well as beyond. But to perform the theory or principles of queer positionality requires, first,
the hard work of theorizing the position and its principles
hence the threshold indispensability of multidimensional analysis
guided both by the lessons of antiessentialism and antisubordination
and by outsider scholarly methods such as interdisciplinarity and
narrativity.
In leaving us with this pointed reminder of such importantindeed,
fundamentalpoints, this collection sets the stage for a similarly
foundational discussion of two equally urgent and consequential
points: first, the role of community-building in queer projects of egalitarian group liberation; and second, the need for postsubordination
vision in the development of a theory and praxis around which the
liberation quests of multiply diverse communities can coalesce in
principled and ethical alignments (Valdes 2000a). Experience teaches
that both of these factors are freighted with great significance. A

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failure to construct communities in the quest for liberation is both a

substantive and practical flaw: a failure of community indicates an
absence of basic human elements within liberational movements.
It means, among other things, that the human resources necessary
for a movement will not be there for the struggles of the movement, and it belies the very idea of movementof group progress
in the long term more than in the short. To nourish movements
for long-term struggles in pursuit of structural and enduring
social transformation thus requires humansmany and diverse
humanswho are willing, as individuals, to act in collaboration, in
union, as communities. This kind of sustained groupness among
oppressed and diverse humans is an act of will that requires and
entails more than strategic or momentary interventionsthe sort
likely to generate (at best) limited, skewed, and ephemeral progress. To sustain the willthe energy, cooperation, and commitmentof many and diverse individuals over long stretches of
time and complex conflicts or daunting adversities requires the
delineation of a substantively compelling vision, a cogent yet multifaceted vision of the ideals and ethics to which the collaboration, or
community, of those different individuals is commonly devoted.
Without vision, what can serve as the long-term basis of communal
antisubordination work?
Without vision we are left with the proverbial crumbs: metaphorical
tickets for a few of us to walk on the welcome mat of Euroheteropatriarchal elites (Nast introduction this issue, quoting Alexander
1998:292). Without community and vision, we are left with little more
than atomized careerism and the cult of star systemsboth of which
depend on acceptance of, or at least conscious acquiescence to, the
needs and biases of dominant arrangements inimical to liberation. Yet
experience teaches that neither atomistic careerism nor cultist star
systems can carve viable paths toward principled group liberation and
substantive social transformation (Iglesias and Valdes 2001). The
underlying yet overarching question is: Can queers realistically expect
that self-centered and ungrounded articulations of professedly liberational agendas will or can inspire collective confidence in coalitional
or collaborative enterprises and activate sustainable commitments of
time, energy, and will among multiply diverse formations of fragile
and vulnerable individuals?
Moreover, returning to the matters of principle and praxis, the perpetual question arises yet again: can queer positionality be reconciled
substantively with careerist maneuvers or cults? Can the ethics of
queered liberation embrace the premises and practices of such
careerism? In the ultimate analysis, can queer positionality prosper
with integrity and vitality in the wake of a collective failure to cultivate
community and posit vision? And more broadly, can any movement

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of liberation represent either movement or liberation without

tending carefully and proactively to community-building and postsubordination vision?
This collections work is to propel a collective engagement with the
substantive and methodological issues embedded in the demands and
challenges of queer (not only gay) liberationmeaning, in effect,
undertaking the rigors of multidimensional discourse and praxis in
consistently critical and self-critical applications of antiessentialism
and antisubordination. This work has focused, as it must, on beginning
a critical mapping of the patterns and particularities that constitute
the geographies and consequences of identity. And this initial work is
superbly accomplished here. These closing queries on community and
vision, therefore, point to some of the next steps facing scholars and
activists working toward a critical geography of the multiply diverse
queer in these times and in many places. These queries invite critical
geographers to claim OutCrit perspectivity and to join OutCrit
scholars and activists from many disciplines and sites to form local and
global networks of queered liberation for all peoples. These works
and queries invite usyouto join activist scholars in the longdeferred claims that belong equally and equitably to all humans:
safety, dignity, intimacy, and prosperity.

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