Queer Spaces of Montreal: Sites of Utopian Sociality and Terrains of Critical Engagement

• Main Author: Hébert, Billy
• Format: Others
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/973920/1/Hebert_MA_S2012.pdf; Hébert, Billy <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/H=E9bert=3ABilly=3A=3A.html> (2012) Queer Spaces of Montreal: Sites of Utopian Sociality and Terrains of Critical Engagement. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

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.