Queer worldings: The messy art of being global in Manila and New York

Abstract

This essay is an exploration of queer (im)possibilities and of the "worlding" of urban spaces by focusing on voices from below. Using ethnographic fieldwork and queer theory to bear upon a conceptualization of "queer "and urban world-making in terms of mess, this essay focuses on the lives of two Filipino working class queers living in Manila and New York. Located at the fringes of gay global modernity, these subjects inhabit recalcitrant and chaotic spaces and quotidian practices that re-narrate and resist the idealized integrative spatial order of global queer cities. This essay contributes to a critical theorization of queerness and urban spatial politics within a transnational framework.