A Queer Journey to Queer Geography: Interview with Lawrence Knopp

A Queer J ourney to Queer Geography: Interview with Lawrence Knopp Joseli Maria Silva Universidade Estadual de Ponta Grossa (UEPG) – Brazil Paulo Jorge Vieira Instituto de Geografia e Ordenamento do Território - Universidade de Lisboa – Portugal Since July 2010, Argentina are the position of Latin geographical field of research? American vanguard in recognizing the right of same sex couples to civil marriage. In addition to the Larry Knopp: Well, first I want to say that I am legitimization of equality in the public sphere between uneasy about the characterization of my career as homosexual and heterosexual, the fact implies the fitting neatly into the category “scientific”. My subversion of the heteronormative character of intellectual agenda has always been to transgress the marriage and family formation, which creates a traditional boundaries of academia – including those demand for change from the perspective of between “natural science”, “social science”, and understanding of social relations that rules the bonds of “humanities” (especially the latter two). In this respect dependency between people forming family units. The I see myself as fitting into a long tradition of transformations in terms of citizenship and queer geographers who view their field as holistic and politics pose challenges to the various social sciences, integrative, while also allying myself with more recent including by geography. In this effervescent context developments in critical social and cultural theory. that we have the honor of interviewing Larry Knopp, That said, it is certainly fair to characterize much of one of the most important geographers of my work as utilizing methods and even language contemporary queer theory, questioning what makes typically associated with “social science”, and as his practice on academic space, sexuality and speaking to audiences that include (but are by no citizenship also a political struggle. means limited to) people who conceive of themselves Larry Knopp held a doctorate in geography as “scientists”. In other words, I think I have been from the University of Iowa in 1989 and is currently reasonably adroit at speaking across philosophical, director of the School Interdisciplinary Arts & epistemological and methodological divides. Sciences at the University of Washington – Tacoma. However, as I explained in “Out in Academia: The Larry Knopp has as one of their most frequent partners Queer Politics of One Geographer’s Sexualisation”, I in the production of numerous articles and book have also been sensitive to the social and political chapters the geographer Michael Brown. Together they contexts within which I have worked, and strategic in have raised challenges involving the geography with the ways I have presented both my scholarship and social justice, politics and citizenship related to myself as a gay man in a heterosexist world. This has sexuality. From this interview we hope that the ideas of entailed, among other things, acknowledging Larry Knopp will spread in the geographical privileges that accrue to me by virtue of my race, class, community in Latin America, in order to establish a and gender, and deploying them in service of what has productive dialogue in various places where there is been ultimately a contradictory (but, I believe, interest in the approach of Queer Geography. defensible) scholarly and activist agenda. As a consequence, my work has been generally well- Joseli Maria Silva and Paulo Jorge Vieira: The received by my peers, including many who identify approach of sexuality in your work in geography much more closely with conventional social science has been present since the beginning of your than I do. scientific career in the '80s. How was the reaction of the scientific community in relation to this JMS and PJV: In your article "On the Relationship Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, Ponta Grossa, v. 2, n. 1, p. 146-150, jan. / jul. 2011. A Queer J ourney to Queer Geography: Interview with Lawrence Knopp Between Queer and Feminist Geographies”, conscious as possible of the ways in which that is published in the journal “The Professional happening and as clear as possible about the ethical, Geographer", in 2007, you write about a series of moral, and/or political stance that one takes with challenges for geographers, theoretical and respect to these processes. methodological, such as the use of emotion, bodily sensations of the researcher in the research process. JMS and PJV: In several papers as Knopp (1995), How, in your opinion, these elements have been Knopp (1997, 2008), Brown and Knopp (2006), incorporated into geographical research? including in your PHD thesis, you write about critical issues related to lesbian and gay Larry Knopp: Some very humanistic cultural gentrification. Currently, urban gentrification geographers, like Yi Fu Tuan, have been open to this promoted by these groups still remains the primary for a long time and have inspired followers. But in the issue in a lot of research. What are the strengths realm of critical social and cultural Geography, and weaknesses of this approach in Geography? including queer Geography, this is (surprisingly) still something relatively new. We still tend to write about Larry Knopp: I’m not sure I agree that there emotion, sensation, etc. much more than we knowingly continues to be a lot of work on the role of lesbians, deploy them as techniques or methods. I think that is gay men, and other sexual minorities – of even of because we still do not really know how to deal sexuality – in gentrification. In fact, it seems to me practically with our own bodily/emotional experiences that scholarly work on gentrification itself has gone as sources of knowledge. British Geography has somewhat out of fashion (at least in Geography). Of advanced more in this area than North American course, this perception is based on what I see Geography has. The interest there in non- published and that I read, which is disproportionately representational theory is one indicator of this, as is an in English and in Geography, Urban Studies, Planning, interest in affect and emotion. Indeed, there is a new and closely related fields. So it is possible that in journal called Emotion, Space, and Society which Latin American scholarship there is more work on this publishes work using emotions methodologically quite subject than in Anglo-America. That said, I have regularly. One feminist geographer who has been struggled over the years to understand my own drift particularly successful in this area is Liz Bondi. But away from research on the intersections between let’s face it: There remains deeply ingrained in the gentrification and sexuality. While there are some modern Western mind and culture, and most personal reasons, I also think the work in this area has importantly modern structures of power, a real fear and lost some of its allure as a topic where academic work loathing of anything that is perceived as beyond the might be seen as making a difference. The juggernaut ability of reason and the mind to control. Emotions, of capitalist property development seemed so bodily sensations, yearnings, desire, etc. are, quite unstoppable by the mid-1990s that a lot of people may simply, still too threatening to dominant systems of have decided to re-focus their energies in ways that knowledge-production to be allowed more than a token seemed to have more potential for political impact amount of space within them (and perhaps career development as well). For example, developments in queer theory have infused JMS and PJV: In the text "A Queer Journey to sexuality and space studies with more of a humanistic Queer " published in 2000 in a book edited by cultural emphasis than they had before, leading to a Pamela Moss, your sexuality, as a personal element, broadening of such studies to include a much wider it is frankly stated. What is your position on the range of spatialities (many of them less obviously relationship of subjective elements and intellectual material) than before. Related to this, the tremendous output of a researcher in Geography? increase in interest in cultural politics by the media and popular culture may have led a younger generation Larry Knopp: Well, ultimately it seems to me that of scholars to believe that the cultural realm now has all knowledge is situated (socially, culturally, more radical potential as an arena of activist politically, etc.). So it doesn’t really make sense to scholarship than other areas. Similarly, the rise of think in terms of “subjectivity-versus-objectivity” in critical and participatory GIS studies and practice have research as an avoidable problem. I take as given that a provided lots of new opportunities for critical political set of values, associated in one way or another with a engagements by activist scholars, including folks researcher’s personal experience and location within interested in sexuality and space (as Michael Brown’s various structures and hierarchies, always influence his and my “Queering the Map” paper shows). The same or her intellectual output. The trick is to be as can be said of political ecology and critical health J oseli Maria Silva e Paulo J orge Vieira 147 Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, Ponta Grossa, v. 2, n. 1, p. 146-150, jan. / jul. 2011. A Queer J ourney to Queer Geography: Interview with Lawrence Knopp geographies, both of which offer opportunities for gender minorities. Whether or not this is the case I grounded political engagement from a critical cultural cannot say. I am cautious about claiming too much perspective. Of course, there is no reason that these influence for this or any academic work that kinds of developments cannot have an impact in the challenges entrenched systems and structures of context of scholarship about gentrification. And power. The most influential social science remains, indeed some valiant scholars are attempting to do just sadly, that which serves power rather than challenging that. But I suspect that many scholars just see it. That is in the nature of how power works – it struggles around gentrification as too disheartening reproduces itself by accumulating capital of all kinds and demoralizing, and have therefore chosen to pursue (including intellectual and cultural capital). paths that they see as more hopeful. JMS and PJV:: In your paper with Michael Brown JMS and PJV: Your concern with power relations on oral history and participatory mapping, on the and the importance of sexual politics is present in historical geography of queer Seattle you some of you work as Brown, Knopp and Morrill highlights a concern over the social action of the (2005 and 2007). What are the contributions that researcher. What is the current role of geographers the geographical production on sexuality has done in academia in collaboration with social to the social and political accomplishments in this movements? area? Larry Knopp: This question seems closely related Larry Knopp: I would say that a concern with to the previous one. I would say that the answer power relations and sexual politics is present in almost depends on the particular geographers in question, the all of my work, not just some of it! Indeed, I am proud social movements involved, and the opportunities for to have been among the first in my field to popularize strategic involvement that exist. With respect to studies of sexuality and space and of the fact that an sexuality and space studies, my sense is that there is no understanding of power relations has always been shortage of researchers who would like to be engaged central to my approach. At the same time, I am with community-based organizations, but the mindful that there were people before me who opportunities are limited by the resources available to attempted to do the same thing but were much less both the community-based organizations and the successful, due primarily to the virulent homophobia, researchers. For young scholars in particular, this can heterosexism, and squeamishness generally about be a disincentive since career advancement is based, in sexuality and desire as topics of scholarly inquiry part, upon the ability to secure resources to support (much less sources of knowledge). Bob McNee, one’s research. The organization with which Michael Jacquie Beyer, and Larry Wolf are among the brave Brown and I have worked in Seattle, for instance, is a early scholars of sexual geographies who profoundly small, very poorly funded all-volunteer organization. inspired me. I’m sure they inspired contemporaries of Fortunately, we have been able to secure small mine like Gill Valentine, David Bell, and Jon Binnie as amounts of support for our projects and to execute well. My sense is that the political impact of sexuality them relatively cheaply. This has cumulative benefits, and space studies has been twofold: First, it has quite as each prior success increases our “career capital” and literally created space for new generations of scholars enables us to be more competitive in future who face a substantially less resistant terrain within the competitions for funding. Still, the stakes are nowhere academy than was previously the case. This is not to near as high as they might be if we were working with say that homophobia, heterosexism, and prudishness different kinds of community-based groups with are not still deeply entrenched within Geography and different agendas and access to more resources. For academia generally, nor that scholars who work in this instance, there do exist larger and more well-funded area do not take substantial risks in doing so. But LGBT and queer organizations, but these tend to be sexuality and space studies are now generally more professionalized and bureaucratized than the recognized as legitimate if not equal in importance to grassroots ones. As a consequence, researchers like us other areas of inquiry. Second, sexuality and space face decisions about trading off influence at the studies have probably contributed in some small way grassroots level for influence within what may seem to the broader acceptance of sexuality and sexual like already compromised, elite organizations. In some minority issues as topics of discussion in popular areas, however, such trade-offs may not be quite so culture and civil society. I hope they have also dire. The world of critical and participatory GIS is one contributed to changes in attitudes towards gay, area with tremendous potential. That’s because of the lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and other sexual and tremendous power of GIS technically, culturally, and J oseli Maria Silva e Paulo J orge Vieira 148 Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, Ponta Grossa, v. 2, n. 1, p. 146-150, jan. / jul. 2011. A Queer J ourney to Queer Geography: Interview with Lawrence Knopp politically. Funding agencies, both governmental and “science” (especially social science). But this is not to non-governmental, tend to see GIS as a set of say that these are all equally welcomed by dominant techniques and technologies with significant potential interests nor that they are safe from manipulation and to “solve” real-world problems. They understand it as co-optation by these same interests. On the contrary, something very practical and applied, rather than as many of them represent clear and direct challenges to something esoteric or inconsequential. So to the extent dominant interests, in much the same way that other that activist researchers can associate themselves with insurgent intellectual movements (e.g., the rise of the “applied research” – especially that which carries with “new left” or of ethnic studies programs in it the perceived authority of very powerful techniques universities) have. Like those movements – and and technologies – there is tremendous potential to similarly popular counter-cultural movements engage productively with social movements. For elsewhere in civil society – their languages and instance, some of the most exciting work of this sort aesthetics are subject to appropriation and going on now involves critical and participatory GIS redeployment in service of very conservative interests. scholars working with groups interested in My concern, then, is that while the ontologies and environmental justice. epistemologies of Geography may be broadening, they are at the same time being reconfigured and JMS and PJV: In which way queer theory will reinterpreted by dominant interests in ways that transform the ontology and epistemology of preserve a patina of radicalism (especially aesthetically geography? At that stage the Anglo-Saxon scientific and linguistically) while completely dislodging them geographical (a pioneer in the approach) is at from their political and philosophic underpinnings. So present? “queer”, for example, becomes just another lifestyle niche to be marketed to, while the idea of situated Larry Knopp: This is a very big question! On the knowledge becomes an excuse for the already one hand, I see queer theory as already having powerful to engage in strategic and well-informed transformed (or at least broadened) the kinds of discursive power games. In sum, while queer theory is ontologies and epistemologies that are taken seriously already transforming epistemologies and ontologies in in Geography. There is much more acknowledgment, Geography in some ways, it is probably too early to for example, of the contingency and fluidity of social say if these transformations are truly meaningful or categories now than in the past, and certainly more sustainable. acknowledgment of sexuality and desire as implicated in a wide range of social processes and discourses. On JMS and PJV: Your career is striking by many the other hand, I see dominant ontologies and intellectuals’ partnerships among the most frequent epistemologies as not particularly threatened by queer has been Michael Brown. So it seems that there is a theory, and in many ways as consolidating their tendency to develop academic collaboration. What dominance in spite of it. The trouble is that queer is the possibility of academia to develop such theory works both with and against certain practices, expanding relationships with scholars developments – some might say contradictions – in from countries outside the Anglo-Saxon axis? civil society and the broader political-economies of the societies in which it has some currency. Clearly queer Larry Knopp: Obviously I think that international theory speaks to the embodied realities of people’s collaboration would be very good for Geography, lives and experiences. It recognizes the multiplicity, geographers, academia, and the world beyond. There fluidity, hybridity, and indeterminacy of categories like are many challenges to international collaboration, gender and sexuality. And it takes seriously the though. Most immediate are the resource challenges – significance of bodily sensations, emotion, and desire especially time and money. But there are also cultural in understanding human relations. At a moment in and other impediments related to the fact that human history when the traditional categories of science and lives tend to be lived out in locales that are rich in related systems of knowledge production are widely unique cultural and political referents, rather than in perceived as having failed to deliver on their spaces of cosmopolitanism. Then again, the advent of promises, non-traditional ways of thinking and framing new techniques and technologies of real-time issues like these are welcome. In this sense I actually communication make overcoming some of these see queer theory, critical race theory, intersectionality, impediments, at relatively low cost, more feasible. poststructural feminisms, and even interdisciplinarity Still, I am old-fashioned enough that I see distinct as responses to the failed systems of knowledge advantages to face-to-face, real-time, embodied production that generally exist under the rubric of collaboration. There is no doubt, for instance, that J oseli Maria Silva e Paulo J orge Vieira 149 Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, Ponta Grossa, v. 2, n. 1, p. 146-150, jan. / jul. 2011. A Queer J ourney to Queer Geography: Interview with Lawrence Knopp Michael Brown’s and my successful collaboration has Annals of the Association of American had everything to do with our mutual connection to the Geographers. Vol. 98, p. 40 - 58, 2008. Seattle area and our ability to work together both face- to-face and, when necessary, in “the field”. In my KNOPP, Lawrence. Gentrification and Gay opinion, then, international collaborations, are most Neighborhood Formation in New Orleans: A Case likely to be successful when they feature either Study. In: JACOBSON, Joyce. and ZELLER, frequent real-time, face-to-face engagements among Adam.(ed.). Queer Economics: A Reader. London and researchers (the traditional model, which assumes the New York:Routledge, 2008, p. 353-373. (Reprinted privilege of cosmopolitanism) or when they assume from GLUCKMAN, Amy. and REED, Besty. (ed.). cultural and spatial distance from the outset, and Homo Economics: Capitalism, Community and exploit this distance as a source of knowledge. The Lesbian and Gay Life, 1997). latter is an approach particularly exemplified by contemporary transnational social networks and political movements, in which users of the internet and mobile devices in far-flung locations forge creative collaborations with one another. This is the approach that I imagine being most practical and, in many ways, most exciting at this particular moment in history. References KNOPP, Lawrence. Sexuality and Urban Space: A Framework for Analysis. In: BELL, David; VALENTINE. Gill. (ed.). Mapping Desire. London and New York:Routledge, 1995, p. 149-161. KNOPP, Lawrence. A Queer Journey to Queer Geography. In: MOSS, Pamela.(ed.). Engaging Autobiography: Geographers Writing Lives. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, p. 78-98, 2000. BROWN, Michael; KNOPP, Larry; MORRIL, Richard. The ‘Culture Wars’ and Urban Electoral Politics: Sexuality, Race, and Class in Tacoma, Washington. Political Geography. Vol. 24, p. 267 - 291, 2005. BROWN, Michael; KNOPP, Larry. Places or Polygons? Governmentality, Sexuality and Scale in The Gay and Lesbian Atlas. Population, Space, and Place. Vol. 12, p. 223 - 242, 2006. KNOPP, Larry. On the Relationship Between Queer and Feminist Geographies. Professional Geographer. Vol. 59, p. 47 - 55, 2007. MORRIL, Richard; KNOPP, Larry; BROWN, Michael. Anomolies in Red and Blue. Political Geography. Vol. 26, p. 525 - 553, 2007. BROWN, Michael; KNOPP, Larry. Queering the Map: The Productive Tensions of Colliding Epistemologies. J oseli Maria Silva e Paulo J orge Vieira 150 Revista Latino-americana de Geografia e Gênero, Ponta Grossa, v. 2, n. 1, p. 146-150, jan. / jul. 2011.