Queer urban trauma and its spatial politics: A lesson from social movements in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem

Abstract

<jats:p> Growing attention has been devoted to the political geography of urban social movements but trauma, its urban context and spatial politics, have been significantly neglected. This paper aims to develop the concept of ‘queer urban trauma’ and its aftermath in the sense of urban and spatial activism, through an analysis of two traumatic events for the LGBT community in Israel. It explains how traumatic events taking place within urban contexts affect the spatial politics of LGBT and queer urban activism. Based on geographies of sexualities and queer theory, this paper aims to fill this gap by analysing traumatic events in two Israeli cities: the 2009 shooting of two young queers in a youth club in Tel Aviv, and the 2015 stabbing of a young girl during the Jerusalem Pride Parade. Tel Aviv is considered the liberal centre of Israel and a local ‘gay heaven’, as well as a destination for global gay tourism. Jerusalem on the other hand is usually described with a sense of alienation among LGBT and queer individuals and movements, where every political, spatial, cultural and financial achievement is a struggle. We argue that the politics of trauma are constructed differently in these two urban settings, producing important nuances of urban activism and politics. Through this empirical discussion, we develop the concept of ‘queer urban trauma’, revealing divergent forms of spatial visibility, presence and activity of the queer movements within urban spaces. </jats:p>

The place of transversal LGBTQ+ urban activisms

“…First, the majority of articles reflect on the roles that alliances play in the increasingly heterogenous social, political and legislative sexual landscapes that LGBTQ+ activists navigate. As the articles by Ramdas (2020), Payne (2020) and Hartal and Misgav (2020) show, LGBTQ+ activist strategies of connection require contextualisation not only in relation to transnational and national sexual politics but also through localised histories of trauma and resistance. Paying attention to the specificities of place, these analyses complicate simplistic characterisations of assimilation, homonormativity or homonationalism to reveal LGBTQ+ activist alliances as contingent and ambivalent.…”

Geotrauma: Violence, place and repossession

“…The auction of social housing retraumatized a community that felt the ricochet of state violence around the coalmine closures several decades earlier. Relatedly, McKinnon et al (2016) identify the traumatic erasure of queer communities' material history in the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand, while Hartal and Misgav (2020) develop an account of queer urban trauma arising from public and private anti-LBGT violence taking distinct shape in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.…”

‘Volviendo a Vivir’ (coming back to life): Urban trauma, activism and building emancipatory futures

“…However, the specifically urban character of these forms of violence, and how women resist and counteract violence, is less well charted (McIlwaine et al, 2023; WRV Collective, 2022). Firstly, then, in this paper we draw on recent literature on (chronic) urban trauma (Emery, 2022; Hartal and Misgav, 2021; Pain, 2019; Shields, 2012), which provides a framework for understanding how experiences of everyday violence are folded in with the effects of wider structural violence and trauma. Urban trauma describes various forms of harm against the city, or the wounding of urban places (Shields, 2012; Till, 2012), and we add to this analysis the accumulating forms of structural and interpersonal violence that our women co-researchers experienced before and since moving to the city.…”