Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siecle St. Petersburg

Places of Tenderness and Heat is a ground-level exploration of queer St. Petersburg at the fin-de-siècle, showing how queer men met and socialized in a city full of risk and opportunity. Olga Petri reconstructs a broad picture of queer sociability, drawing on explicitly recorded incidents and investigating encounters that escaped bureaucratic surveillance and suppression. Her work reveals how queer men's lives were conditioned by developing urban infrastructure, weather, light, and lighting, and the informal constraints on enforcing law and moral order in the city's public spaces.

Format: Hardback
Length: 276 pages
Publication date: 15 June 2022
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Places of Tenderness and Heat is a captivating exploration of queer St. Petersburg at the turn of the century. Olga Petri takes us on a journey through bustling shopping arcades, bustling bathhouses, and bustling public urinals, revealing how queer men regularly met and socialized. Through meticulous reconstruction, she unveils the milieu that enabled them to navigate a city teeming with both risk and opportunity.

Petri's focus on a non-Western, unexplored, and fragile form of urban modernity offers a comprehensive portrayal of queer sociability. She draws on a rich array of explicitly recorded incidents that led to prosecution or medical treatment, as well as numerous encounters that escaped bureaucratic surveillance and suppression. Her work sheds light on how the development of urban infrastructure, weather, light, and lighting, as well as informal constraints on enforcing law and moral order in the city's public spaces, shaped the lives of queer men.

Places of Tenderness and Heat is an ambitious record of the intricate negotiation of illicit male homosexual sex, friendship, and cruising, unveiling a historically fascinating urban milieu in which efforts to manage the moral landscape often inadvertently facilitated queer encounters. This book is a testament to the resilience and creativity of queer individuals in navigating a society that often sought to marginalize and control them.

Weight: 564g
Dimension: 158 x 237 x 25 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501763779