Not Your Shock Troops: Queer Artists Disrupting Gentrification in Montreal's St-Henri

This thesis develops a queer(ed) analyses of gentrification, one that troubles the current analysis of the role of artists and cultural workers in the process. It does so by drawing on critical race, queer, and feminist theory and through empirical research in St-Henri that investigates the nuances of the cultural dimensions of urban redevelopment. Without denying the importance of economic processes in driving gentrification, this research suggests there is a need to think about the way that normativity is entangled with gentrification. In doing so, the research also seeks to uncover queer resistance to these changes in urban space and investigates how certain forms of queer resistance, even when embodied in artists, might disrupt rather than propel gentrification processes.