Discussing from Queer Peripheries: (Un)Desiring the Centre: Book of Abstracts

A plethora of social relations, including those related to sexuality and gender, are still discussed from global metropolitan (queer) centres. Processes such as the gentrification of queer neighbourhoods, cruising, and queer mobilities are often associated with New York, Copenhagen, and other big cities, despite the fact that most of us live, work, love, consume, and produce in ordinary and small places. These are queer, too. The periphery is discussed from the centre, creating distance from its material spaces. Conferences are spaces of temporary disciplinary centre-making. At the conference in Maribor, we ask what happens when we not only empiricise and theorise, but also discuss and academically do queer periphery from the periphery itself. Are we, by organising this conference in a city (or town?) with fewer than 100,000 people and no official gay or lesbian bar, placing it at the centre of queer geographies? We invite contributions on, from, and about metropolitan centres and peripheries, as well as broader geographies of sexualities, to think broadly about what happens when academic work (which does not have to be about the periphery) is placed in the materiality of the queer periphery. What kind of potential does the text gain in the spatio-temporalities of the conference?