ABSTRACT
The contributors to this volume, and to the wider study of sexualities, move quite freely between histories and geographies of sex and sexuality on the one hand, and literary and cultural representations on the other. Some contributors concentrate on the former, others on the latter. In their studies of non-metropolitan America, for example, Angelia Wilson (Chapter 11) concentrates on experiences, William Spurlin (Chapter 10) on representations. More generally, writers on this subject display a tendency to privilege one or the other. Foucault has inspired many to privilege what may be called discursive constructions of sexuality-to treat literary representations of sexuality as if they mapped directly onto bodies and identities, in other words as if they were sexualities. Historian Michael Mason argues, conversely, that sexualityencompassing forms of activity, demeanour, professed belief, private belief and more —is not reducible to discourse (Mason 1995:40, 172-3). Other empirically minded historians and geographers point to differences between image and ‘reality’, with regards to sexualities and sexual spaces (e.g. Davies 1996). If image is not the same as ‘reality’ and neither is privileged, there follows the question of how the two spheres co-exist and interact. This means tracing an interplay between what one geographer has called metaphorical and material spaces of sexuality (Brown 1996). In this chapter I explore this kind of interplay, specifically between imagined geographies and concrete sexuality politics.
