From situated space to social space: Dyke bar commemoration as reparative action

• Published in: Journal of lesbian studies 2020-01, Vol.24 (3), p.311-325
• Main Author: Brown-Saracino, Japonica
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: bars; cities; Commemoration; community; culture; Female; gender; Homosexuality, Female; Humans; lesbian; materiality; Memory; Private Facilities; queer; reparative reading; Sexual and Gender Minorities; sexualities; Social Environment; Social space
• ISSN: 1089-4160; 1540-3548
• DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2019.1684753

Drawing on an ethnography of dyke bar commemoration in four U.S. cities, this article applies Sedgwick's concept of "reparative reading" to commemorative practices, tracing how commemorators leverage this reading to guide a logic of reparative action. They commemorate material spaces rooted in place, but cultivate mobile and inclusive space. That is, commemorators, most of whom have had limited exposure to the spaces that they mourn, carefully situate the lost dyke bar, highlighting geographic, esthetic, demographic, and temporal attributes. The images they construct of the situated bar contrast with their commemorative events, which emphasize social over alternate attributes. Commemorators repair and critique the situated bar - not to restore it, but to harness it for their forward-facing efforts - by using memory to advocate for a move from specificity to generality; from situated to mobile and inclusive social spaces. I elucidate how this turn toward social space and bar commemoration itself emerges not merely from institutional and territorial loss, but from commitments to diversity, inclusivity, and queer identities and politics.