example, Brown and Knopp, in articulating the
complex relationship between sexuality, poli-
tics and place, refer to the home, the academy,
gay bars, gyms, workplaces and chat rooms.
Bondi and Davidson consider gendered envi-
ronments such as the stereotypical building
site, boxing ring and aeroplane cockpit, which
they compare with the ‘typing pool’, the aero-
bic fitness centre and the aeroplane isle. This
careful attention to the manifestation of
power relations in local environments, how-
ever, does not necessarily preclude a careful eye
being cast over broader territories. Bonnett
and Nayak argue that ‘white studies’ needs to
be global in its reach. While they realize this
may, ‘to some, have a slightly colonial ring to
it’, white identities are a global phenomenon
that have global impacts.Whiteness continues
to be constructed as a cultural and racial
norm.
Not only is subjectivity always emplaced; it
is also always embodied. This is the second
theme that links the chapters in this section.
Subjects have a weighty materiality. Probyn
claims that there is a growing awareness
amongst cultural theorists of a need to instil a
sense of materiality into theorizations of sub-
jectivity. She explains:‘this may be due to a col-
lective turning away from some of the
excesses of postmodernism and even post-
structuralist thought which, it can be argued,
diluted a clear sense of the constraints of
context’.
Bonnett and Nayak display this awareness
of a need to instil a sense of materiality into
their theorizations. They argue that racial
terms such as ‘white’, ‘black’ and ‘people of
colour’ refer directly to the body and desig-
nate or ‘fix’ our flesh and blood in particular
ways. Brown and Knopp reiterate that sexual-
ity is not simply a social construct but a ‘set
of lived experiences’. In a discussion of the
important role played by Bob McNee in
putting sexuality on the geographical agenda
in the mid 1980s, Brown and Knopp explain
that his contributions represented ‘an embod-
ied insistence that oppression of gays and
lesbians was real, systematic and fully present
in the discipline of geography’.
Bondi and Davidson extend this point to
argue that lived experiences and ideas are inti-
mately interwoven.There is no clear distinction
between ‘doing’ and ‘theorizing’ gender. Indiscussing the powerfulness, pervasiveness,
and taken-for-grantedness of differentiating
people by gender – by being ‘male’ or ‘female’ –
Bondi and Davidson invite readers to reflect
on their own surprise at discovering that the
voice we heard as ‘male’ turns out to belong
to a woman (or vice versa).
Probyn also moves seamlessly between
‘doing’ and ‘theorizing’. She invites readers to
consider Althusser’s account of ideology
alongside her own account of a ‘happenstance’
encounter with a young aboriginal woman in
Redfern, Sydney. ‘Doing’ difference cannot be
extracted from theorizing difference.
A third key theme evident in this section is
the desire to challenge or resist (see Pile and
Keith, 1997, on resistance and Thrift, 1997: 127,
on the significance of the ‘ion’ in subjection)
racist, heteronormative and/or masculinist
regimes. Bondi and Davidson explain that their
account arose from their ‘own commitment
to, and participation in, the development of
feminist perspectives ... in cultural geography’.
This politics, argue Bondi and Davidson, may
take the form of Enlightenment ways of think-
ing about human values, progress, inequalities,
self-determination and so on, or it may take
the form of post-Enlightenment critiques of
metanarratives and universal knowledge:
‘feminist perspectives need to deploy both
Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment ways of
thinking ... and in so doing have the potential
to foster productive paradoxes’.
There is much debate on what are the most
effective ways to resist societal relations,
processes and/or institutions that foster
exploitation and domination (see Routledge,
1997: 68–72). Resistance is not simply the
binary opposite of domination, nor is it some-
thing that can be plucked from spatiality.There
are geographies of resistance(Pile and Keith,
1997). Like Bondi and Davidson, Brown and
Knopp recognize that resistance is complex,
contradictory and often paradoxical. They
note, in relation to being simultaneously both
inside and outside ‘the closet’, that it is possi-
ble to escape and resist one kind of oppres-
sion only to be engaged in new forms of
oppression. ‘The closet’ itself can be read
paradoxically as a space of lack but also as a
space of ‘creative, ingenious and transforma-
tive sexual, cultural and political resistances to
heteronormativity’. Similarly, Bonnett andINTRODUCTION 285Section-5.qxd 03-10-02 10:38 AM Page 285