ABSTRACT

Within the context of queer academic geographies, we are currently witnessing the simultaneous trends of a desire to radicalise the academy, on one hand, and gradual normalisation of homosexuality, on the other. Natalie Oswin argues that such a coupling of trends necessitates a theorisation of ‘complicit queer futures’ (Oswin 2005). She critiques geographers who locate queerness outside the spaces of capitalist logics and practices. Among other things, such a distinction unintentionally constructs difference based on authenticity, with authentic radical political action being perceived as outside the spaces of domination. “Instead of thinking complicit space as total and negative, we might reconceptualise it as ambivalent and porous, as an undetermined set of processes that simultaneously enables both resistance and capitulation” (Oswin 2005, 84).