Geographers have recently turned their attention to the construction and functioning of convergence spaces within the global justice movement (Routledge, 2003; 2005) and to local experiments in autonomous living in Argentina and elsewhere (Chatterton, 2005). This paper offers an ethnographic study of a series of queer autonomous spaces that have operated in London over the last decade. These spaces are considered as specifically queer examples of the many experi- ments in alternative ways of being that have been inspired by the anticapitalist networks of the global justice movement. As such, this ethnography poses questions regarding the epistemological and ontological status of `queer' within `queer geogra- phy'. Although some critical queer geographers (Bell and Binnie,2000) have alluded to the need for alternatives to the dominant commercial gay scene, few have actually examined such alternative spaces and the processes that produce them. All of the events I describe in this paper were consciously promoted as being ``for queers of all sexualities and genders''. While these activist spaces endeavour to be inclusive of bisexuals and transgendered people, `queer' in this context is still more than simply an umbrella term for all those who are`othered' by normative heterosexuality. Indeed, queer in these spaces is as opposed to homonormativity as it is to heteronormativity. Queer celebrates gender and sexual fluidity and consciously blurs binaries. It is more of a relational process than a simple identity category (Heckert, 2004). It is infused with a creative, `do-it-yourself' (DIY) ethos that prefers thrift-shop drag over the latest designer labels (Hennan, 2004). Queer revels in its otherness, difference, and distance from mainstream society (gay or straight), even as it recognises that this distance is always incomplete. In other words, by aligning myself with these networks, I am using `queer' in a way that is quite distinct from its usual application by some sexual geographers (Ingram et al, 1997). Furthermore, the functioning of these spaces and the activist networks that create them poses questions about what it means to be an activist. These networks operate under several different names depending on location and context, but they most frequently connect under the name of `Queeruption' (a compound of `queer' and `eruption'). At its most conventionally `political', their activism rearticulates a politics Mutinous eruptions: autonomous spaces of radical queer activism Gavin Brown Department of Geography, Bennett Building, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH, England; e-mail: gavin.p.brown@kcl.ac.uk Received 30 September 2005; in revised form 15 January 2006 Environment and Planning A 2007, volume 39, pages 2685 ^ 2698 Abstract. This paper offers a reflexive ethnography of a set of queer autonomous spaces created in London over the last five years. It traces the political genealogies of a recent strand of radical queer activism that is broadly aligned with the anarchist and anticapitalist wings of the global justice movement. In line with the usage of the term `queer' by these activists themselves, to refer to a variety of states of being that challenge both homonormativity and heteronormativity, this paper utilises a definition of `queer' that moves beyond the ways in which it has been mobilised by many sexual geographers. The ethnography poses questions about the `queer' in `queer geography' and what it means to be an `activist'. This work considers the importance (as well as the limits) of these autonomous queer spaces. It suggests that the process of collective experimentation to build auton- omous queer spaces is ultimately more transformative and empowering than the resulting structures. DOI:10.1068/a38385