Food practices, queer social reproduction and the geographies of LGBTQ+ activism

Abstract

This article examines the role of food practices –namely, the sharing of food – in the production of political solidarity within spaces of LGBTQ + activism. We suggest that focusing on food practices can help us understand how care and pleasure underpin the politics of solidarity. Drawing on two multi-site qualitative research projects on transnational activism around LGBTQ cultural and political events in Poland and a comparative study of queer film festivals as activism in different localities and geopolitical sites in Europe, we argue that food practices play a key role within the queer social reproduction of event-based transnational solidarities through a range of inter-connected effects: Food practices (a) are constitutive of community creating withing transnational activist networks; (b) are tied in with the cultivation of hospitality and care in activist contexts; (c) allow for the experience of mutual pleasure that opens up possibilities for meaningful and joyful encounters. Following Elspeth Probyn's argument that thinking about food in relation to sex can help us understand the everyday ethics of living and value of pleasure in forging social connections, the paper shifts the emphasis of our understanding LGBTQ + activism from militancy or interest-based or rights-focused contestations towards emotional, embodied and material social reproduction. The paper further provides a significant contribution to current debates on queer social reproduction that tend to focus either on practices localised in the home or in the city, by showing how queer social reproduction operates in transnational networks and circuits, involving more transitory and temporary spaces.