This paper recounts an experiment in learning together, which took place over a series of six reading weekends in different cities over a period of six years. The participants were German-speaking geography students plus one English academic. The aim was to discuss issues (beginning with queer theory) that could not be discussed within the German academy and to do so in a way which was open, questioning, cooperative, and based on friendship.
BASSDA 2006
The „D“ in BASSDA stands for Doreen, with whom five German-speaking feminist geography students wrote an article entitled „A kind of queer geography“ exactly ten years ago. Some of the authors had planned a reunion in London this year. We had wanted to catch up, to learn how and what everyone was doing, and to reflect on how things have been developing ever since some of us and Doreen had struck sparks off each other in a conversation during a break in the Hettner Lectures in Heidelberg in 1998. But now Doreen, around whom we had organized, is gone; and it will take some time to figure out what this means for ‚us‘.
Doreen has been an inspiration to many people, as witnessed by the countless obituaries that are currently being circulated among those who have had the privilege to know her, and who are now, like us, stunned by her sudden absence. Doreen touched and moved as the person, activist and thinker she was, radically setting in motion relationships, thoughts, ideas, concepts, theories, and politics. Her conceptualization of space as the product of interrelations, as the sphere of the co-existence of distinct stories-so-far, and as the constantly emerging product of necessarily embedded material practices; and her related reflections on the spatialities of power relations have deeply influenced the ways in which not only geographers but also critical cultural theorists, postcolonial scholars, philosophers or economists and many other theorists, as well as many activists and politicians, think about space, identity and power (for details about the range of Doreen’s academic impact see Featherstone/Painter 2013).
Here, we specifically want to remember how meeting Doreen has urged on feminist geographies and initiated queer geographies in German-speaking geography. Other than received in the UK and possibly also other than identified by Doreen herself (Painter 2016), we primarily recognized her as feminist geographer.
When some of us first met Doreen in Heidelberg in 1998, German-speaking feminist geography did not yet have its own textbook. But there existed a rich landscape of international networking among German-speaking feminist geographers. This included the semi-annual (!) Geographinnentreffen (Feminist geography meeting) organized and attended by Bachelor and Masters students in different cities and countries; the group SPUNK – Feministisch-poststukturalistische Geographinnen, which was driven by a group of Masters and PhD students; and the more institutionalized Arbeitskreis feministische Geographie (Study Group Feminist Geography), whose members many of us have since become, and on whose website we are now publishing this brief history. Driven by these dynamic groups, feminist perspectives and the idea of gender as a structuring principle of the spatial (and vice versa) on the one hand and female geography professors on the other were eventually, if still very hesitantly, beginning to push their way into German, Swiss and Austrian lecture halls and geography departments.
Doreen had been in conversation with German-speaking feminist geographers long before, as for instance manifested by her contribution to the early feminist geography volume „Ortssuche“ in 1993, or by the great interest in her book „Space, Place and Gender“ (1994). In terms of feminist geography, then, what happened after Heidelberg was an intense continuation of an exchange that had been initiated long before. However: Queer Theory was nowhere on the agenda. Why was this so? some of us, with Doreen, wondered during our conversation in Heidelberg. It was this resolute absence of queer perspectives in German-speaking geographies that ignited our urge to explore their possibilities. It seemed to us, who wanted to think more intensely about identity, space and power, that Queer Theory had so much to offer, as a radical critique of exclusionary identity politics based on any singular identity, and as a promising path to understanding the ways space and identity are co-constitutive in ways that reach beyond the category of gender. Following the argument of queer theorists, we wanted to use Queer Theory not as a theory about queer people but as a method, as a way of (un)thinking and (un)acting, and as a theory whose locus might turn out to (also) reside outside academia. The focus was on breaking boundaries and categories, and on creating a radical theoretical openness. Urged on by these reflections and feelings – which relevantly included downright fear of some of us to of bring Queer Theory up in our respective academic settings – and energized by Doreen’s infectious curiosity and encouragement, we decided to create a space in which we could further explore our questions. During a break in the garden of the Villa Bosch in Heidelberg (the venue of the Hettner Lectures), we asked Doreen whether she would be interested in meeting to debate queer geographies. She immediately said “yes”. This was the beginning of what was to become a series of six annual Doreen Massey Reading Weekends, which were held in different places in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands between 1999 and 2004.
The Reading Weekends were to be a space in which we could link the exploration of the potential of Queer Theory for geographical thinking to the personal and the political as well as to our own academic work. „Making friends was more important than networking“, we wrote in our reflection of the meetings in Gender, Place & Culture,“ and wild explorations more characteristic than the search for ‚proper knowledge'“ (BASSDA 2006: 174). Starting and ending with Queer Theory, we used a host of materials and methods to approach a chosen topic each year, which were always related to the triad identity, power and space. Role plays, feature and documentary films, media images and academic texts were used to address questions like: What representational spaces does an image of a bunch of white gay men performing a Schuhplattler (a traditional ‚masculine‘ alpine dance) at the Gay Pride in Munich open up (or not)? What could a conversation between a spatial analyst and a poststructuralist about the conceptualization of identity sound like?
The weekends were not only to be a space to theoretically reflect on these issues but also an attempt to create a queer space, and self-to reflect on how we as a group were doing in terms of establishing such a space. „We wanted an open space, but also needed it to be protected. We wanted to subvert, but we also wanted to claim legitimation. We wanted a non-hierarchical space, but there were also differences,“ we concluded, as we quickly realized that infinite openness is impossible, that categories can be politically affirmative, and power a positive force (BASSDA 2006: 182).
Hence, to establish openness, we practiced exclusions. For instance, we decided against inviting professors (except Doreen). Also, since we explicitly intended it to be a feminist space (which we refused to conflate with what we defined as a queer space), we also discussed the participation of men (we decided in favor of them – but, maybe tellingly, not many came). At the same time, the fringes of ‚we‘ remained fuzzy. There was kind of a core group who felt responsible and also seemed to be endowed with more defining power. But even the composition of this core group changed over time, as did all other participants. Still the ‚group‘ seemed to be navigating on a certain course, as became manifest at a moment of crisis, in which ‚we‘ felt the weekend might get out of ‚our hands‘. At this point the weekends began to run the danger of becoming ‚established,‘ and people and institutions began to push into the weekends who seemed more interested in Doreen’s ‚big name‘ and her ‚big topics‘ (her critique of globalization, neoliberalism) rather than our defined focus. ‚We‘ decided to counteract this tendency. Retrospectively the authors feel this was a telling case of closure needed to maintain openness.
And Doreen? We organized around Doreen without her figuring as a leader. She was always present at the weekends, but did not take more space than the rest of us in terms of setting the topics, contributing material, or participating in the discussions. Doreen had an exceptionally mindful and authentic way of positioning herself as a member of the group, at the same time without holding back her thoughts, experience and wisdom. We used to joke that Doreen’s only privilege consisted of her not having to bring her own sleeping bag to the self-catering houses in which we held the retreats. We were not even allowed to carry her little suitcase. Doreen ironically called us „crazy girls,“ because within an increasingly neoliberal academic world instead of solely focusing on the advancement of our careers we continued to find the time to organize weekends outside the academic system to discuss new theories and their impacts on our work and lives.
It was not because Doreen was one of the best-known geographers and philosophers that we wanted her to participate in our meetings, but because she represented, and was interested in thinking more about, the kind of open feminist and queer thinking we wanted to push forward. As things progressed, Doreen’s name and the meetings became kind of a synonym for what we wanted to achieve in our work as geographers. Also, she became a dear friend.
At the same time, we strategically used the Reading Weekends as drivers for the institutionalization of feminist and queer geographies. Doreen would always give a public lecture at our respective departments, which significantly helped to raise funds and made visible in official academia what had often remained unspeakable before. In those years – note this is as late as the 2000s! – many of us heard the words ’sexuality‘ or ‚lesbian‘ uttered within our geography departments for the very first time. Coming from Doreen Massey, this left a deep impression on the audience and, in us, a dizzying sense of entitlement and possibility.
After six years we decided to bring the weekend series to a conclusion, before the event became automatic or institutionalized. Doreen said: “We made history. Let’s write an article about our practices and experiences!” So we did, and at a final meeting six of us drafted „A kind of queer geography“ in Doreen’s house in the South of France.
Many of ‚us‘ have since become lecturers, assistant professors and professors. Others have decided to leave academia and follow paths in schools, governmental institutions, NGOs, or in culture or politics. For many, the exchange among each other and with Doreen have been formative in the way we think, politicize, and connect. Through our work, as well as the work of many other feminist geographers in Germany, Switzerland and Austria who have met and worked with Doreen, her work and her way of relating continue to be a crucial reference in feminist and queer geographies. This is evident in the bibliographies of dissertations, books, textbooks and edited volumes in feminist and queer geographies such as for instance the edited volume „Geschlechterverhältnisse, Raumstrukturen, Ortsbeziehungen“ (Bauriedl et al. 2010) or the textbook „Gender Geographien. Geschlecht und Raum als soziale Konstruktionen“ (Wastl-Walter 2010). As to queer geographies in German-speaking geography: While the number of queer theoretical contributions has increased, and while in many, but not all, institutions the openness towards queer perspectives has grown, much of the potential of Queer Theory for German-speaking geography still remains to be explored. We will continue this path with Doreen in our mind and our hearts.
Tina Büchler (Bern), Sybille Bauriedl (Hamburg, Bonn) in September 2016
BASSDA (2006): A Kind of Queer Geography: The Doreen Massey Reading Weekends. In: Gender, Place and Culture 13(2), pp. 173-186. (by Bauriedl, Sybille, Büchler, Tina, Strüver, Anke, Malecek, Sabine, Massey, Doreen, von Streit, Anne.) > free access
Bauriedl, Sybille, Schier, Michaela, Strüver, Anke (eds.) (2010): Geschlechterverhältnisse, Raumstrukturen, Ortsbeziehungen: Erkundungen von Vielfalt und Differenz im spatial turn. Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
Featherstone, David, Painter, Joe (eds) (2013): Spatial politics: essays for Doreen Massey, Wiley-Blackwell.
Painter, Joe (2016): Doreen Massey (1944-2016): an appreciation. In: Soundings 63: https://www.lwbooks.co.uk/sites/default/files/s63_04painter.pdf
Bühler, Elisabeth (1983): Ortssuche. Zur Geographie der Geschlechterdifferenz. Zürich: efef-Verlag.
Wastl-Walter, Doris (2010): Gender Geographien. Geschlecht und Raum als soziale Konstruktion. Stuttgart: Steiner-Verlag.
