Doing Queer Studies Now

I will be presenting at the University of Michigan conference Doing Queer Studies Now, taking place in Ann Arbour October 21 to 23. The title of my presentation is "To Begin in the Archives: Positioning Queer Archives as Tactics of Pleasure." A summary of the paper is below:

Queer archivists have embarked on rescue missions to preserve documents otherwise lost and reclaim queer records from the sanitizing grip of public institutions. Ann Cvetkovich writes, “…in the absence of institutionalized documentation or in opposition to official histories, memory becomes a valuable historical resource, and ephemeral and personal collections of objects stand alongside the documents of the dominant culture in order to offer alternative modes of knowledge.” Imbued with a residue of collective memory, queer archival collections offer a material means to memorialize, investigate and cherish the passing of events beyond the actors who created these records. Brien Brothman describes this phenomenon as archival “afterglow”. Furthermore, queer archivists, mostly volunteers and amateur historians, offer expertise and personal experience to help researchers mediate between the records of the past and the here and now.

Drawing on the works of Heather Love, José Esteban Muñoz, and Svetlana Boym, this project aims to situate queer archives as tactics of pleasure. That is, these collections and the spaces that house them are not only tangible zones of contact for remembering and reparation, but also as places where queer people can imagine a shared heritage. I argue that the acts of collecting and caring for queer archives are pleasurable—for many, archival work is serious leisure. Public outreach and reference are equally important for helping to build a positive queer genealogy. As well, researchers can experience pleasure when uncovering records of the past. The juissance of touching the past and incorporating it into the present ensures the continuance of knowledge creation, making public our once hidden histories. Thus, queer records do not end in the archives, but begin in the archives.