Abstract

From November 2009 to August 2010, I was actively involved as an organizer of and as a participant at Montreal queer events. In this thesis, I argue that the queer spaces (places-as-events) I studied can be seen as sites for alternative, deliberate, and accountable utopian forms of sociality, and as terrains of emergence for a critical analysis of the way things are and of how they could be. The analysis I present stems from multi-sited ethnography based on participant-observation at three queer festivals (two organized in Montreal, one in Toronto) and during the 2010 G20 protests. Throughout my ethnographic chapters, I provide a description of what I and other activists mean when we use the term ‘queer’, I discuss the ‘raison d’être’ of queer spaces, I identify the place-making practices of activists and organizers, and I provide a temporal framework with which to analyze what happens in and what emerges out of queer spaces. Ultimately, my contribution is to show that queer activists are deeply invested in a queer theoretical and political project, as such reconciling the study of queer spaces and the queer study of space.

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