Norms in motion
A reading of sapphic safe spaces as affective manifestos
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52610/rhs.v30i92.463Keywords:
manifesto, affect, sapphic, queer, participatory researchAbstract
This article explores sapphic safe spaces in a rhetorical interpretation of those as affective manifestos in motion. In opposition to society’s conventional heteronormative spaces, sapphic safe spaces manifest an alternative universe that enact and embody sapphic ideals and culture. The rhetorical gain in reading safe spaces as manifestos is rooted in an interpretation of the manifesto genre as social actions (Miller, 1984; Auken, 2020). The sapphic safe spaces are examined through an autoethnographic, rhetorical field study of a sapphic safe space. The field study shows how sapphic safe spaces manifest a utopian world in which sapphic people have a unique opportunity to feel a sense of belonging and safety through the experience of alignment between body and space and thereby acquire rhetorical agency (cf. Just, 2025).
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