Reconciling self: gay men and lesbians using domestic materiality for identity management

Responding to calls to ‘re-materialize’ research in social and cultural geography, this paper critically considers the role of domestic materiality in gay/lesbian identity management, and makes a particular contribution to work on gay men's and lesbians' experiences, meanings and uses of domestic environments. Prior work in other contexts has shown that the maintenance of domestic materiality—that is, the accumulation and arrangement of meaningful possessions in domestic space—underwrites identity work. Drawing on in-depth interviews with gay/lesbian Australians, I apply this contention to gay/lesbian homemaking practices. In particular, conceptualizing identity as fractured, I argue that the maintenance of domestic materiality reconciles diverse dimensions of multi-faceted selves. Different possessions embody different facets of self—not only sexuality, but also familial connections, cultural heritage, spiritual beliefs, inter alia. Juxtaposing these objects at home brings together the diverse fragments of self, materially embedding a holistic sense of self within domestic space. Domestic materiality thus (re)unites various dimensions of fractured selves, reconciling sexual identities with familial, ethnic-cultural and spiritual identities, inter alia. This reconciliatory function of material homemaking is a key way in which sexual identities are affirmed in the everyday lives of these gay/lesbian Australians.