New directions for asexual geographies

Abstract

Thinking geographically involves empirically contextualizing and critically contesting the situatedness of relational life. Thinking asexually, meanwhile, means fundamentally questioning the givenness of social and sexual life and seeking alternative arrangements. We suggest that these two approaches, taken together, constitute a frontier of queer knowledge. Pointing in four scholarly directions for ‘asexual geographies,’ we argue that thinking geography asexually, and asexuality spatially: empirically grounds considerations of asexual community formations in space; challenges understandings of asexuality by emphasising non-identitarian asexualities; critiques compulsory sexuality and its spatial (re)production, and raises negative theories of (a)sexuality to think possibility through that which has not yet come. This paper invites queer and feminist scholars to pursue asexual geographies, arguing for a research agenda that attends to the nonsexual in its multiple spatial forms and operations.