ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the most destructive disasters to strike the country, causing massive damage to buildings and infrastructure, as well as 185 deaths and many more non-fatal injuries. It describes fragments of queer heritage in post-earthquake Christchurch and to explore lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) and mainstream responses to the loss of queer heritage. The chapter analyses the data through five thematic frames: Displacement, ambivalence, invisibility, reminding and remembering. The spatial metaphor–heritage–is suggestive of the flow of power in heritage practice. Iain Robertson argues that 'mainstream manifestations of heritage' are 'nationalist, top-down, commercial and tourism-focussed perspectives' that are concerned with 'visitors, audience and consumption'. Queer heritage–the heritage of LGBT communities–neatly exemplifies heritage. Given the centrality of heritage to the city's pre-disaster identity, the fate of historically or architecturally significant buildings and places was of considerable public concern in post-earthquake Christchurch.
