2024_Maitri Shah — SEA Archives

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Queer(ing) city: exploring alternate spatialities and solidarities

Beyond norms and routines
Maitri Shah, 2024

Jonathan Raban’s book ‘Soft City’ introduces the concept of a softer imagination of the city. This idea challenges the rigid boundaries set by traditional societal constructs and envisions urban spaces as more fluid and adaptable, instead of merely perceiving cities as static physical landscapes, codes, and categories.

This study adapts the concept of ‘Soft City’ to challenge the conventional notions of space to create an alternate understanding of how Queer individuals claim their space in the city. Navigating life as a queer individual involves a continuous process of negotiating space within a society predominantly shaped by cisgender and heterosexual norms. It explores how these negotiations challenge conventional notions of space and lead to the creation of alternative ideas of community and friendship. It argues that cities are not rigid entities but can soften to accommodate queer identities.

The study focuses on three individuals, at intersections of caste, class, gender, and sexuality, examining their daily routines, negotiations, and spatial claims. It investigates how each person navigates their identity as a set of coordinates within society, directing how they interact with and shape personal and social spaces.

The city, in this context, offers queer individuals places of friction, leisure, and refuge. These spaces blur the boundaries of conventional societal norms, allowing for the rupture of traditional fabric and engaging in newer forms of community through both physical and digital mediums. The transformation of urban spaces by queer individuals becomes acts of transgression. This thesis proposes a queered reading of the city, looking at the ways in which queer individuals claim their place in the city through solidarity and friendship.

Read also under ‘Memory and Belonging’:

Spatialities of everyday heritage

Memory and Belonging
Aashika Vijaykar, 2020

Galalelya jaga ("गाळलेल्या जागा"): overlaps of memory and home

Memory and Belonging
Aditi Bhandari, 2024

Remembering ghar: continuities of memory

Memory and Belonging
Anika Pugalia, 2024

Architecture of a monument: Vasai fort

Memory and Belonging
Chinmay Kadwadkar, 2018

Architecture and memory: remembering home in involuntary dislocation

Memory and Belonging
Dhruv Chavan, 2018

Retrofitted domesticities

Memory and Belonging
Nikunj Dedhia, 2020

Architecture and healing: civil war inversion of public space Borella, Colombo

Memory and Belonging
Rutu Kelekar, 2018

Spatiality of remembrance: encounters between the native and urban

Memory and Belonging
Tanishqa Rodrigues, 2020

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