Queer as Folk: Producing the Real of Urban Space

This paper is about the construction of space and place in the urban imaginary. It draws on multidisciplinary empirical research—on Violence, Sexuality and Space—conducted in a place that was simultaneously represented in one of the most controversial programmes ever to be screened on British television—Queer as Folk. As the television programme intervened in the responses from the interviews and focus groups, we begin, through an exploration of spatial referents and characterisation, to explore the `authentic' underpinning for the queer imaginary. We examine the sexual politics of place and space as a politics of verisimilitude, affectivity and political claims-making.