is a list maker. Throughout the Greer archive we find examples of these jotted on the reverse of printed emails and letters: shopping lists; family trees for sixteenth century poets. The Greer archive itself is a series of lists. The 'Television' series is a list of programs she's appeared on. The 'Women Artists' series is a list of women artists, from antiquity to contemporary practice, with files relating to over 4000 individual artists. She even began work in the 1970s on a 'Women's Book of Lists', a pot boiler including lists of bestselling pantyhose and current bride prices. Archivists trade in lists too. Box lists, finding aids. Why do we make lists? To help us find things, to help us remember things.
s introduction to Queering Archives: Historical Unravellings posits that 'in a catalog of queer archives you can find not only a listing of current gay and lesbian archives around the world but also a listing of those gay and lesbian archives that "no longer exist" and, most bewitchingly, a listing of those archives that "never existed"' (p. 1). The Foucauldian conception of the archive proposed in The Archaeology of Knowledge (1969), as not a body of documentary evidence nor the institutions that act as its custodian but 'the law of what can be said, the system that governs the appearance of statements as unique events' (p. 129), is used as both a touchstone and a problematic in this volume. This special issue of Radical Histories Review explores the ways in which LGBTQIA history and experience have been and continue to be negated or silenced by archival institutions, and ways in which we may reimagine archival hegemony to better encompass voices from the margins.The 12 essays are loosely grouped in four chapters, with a great deal of overlap in between. Approaches range from interpretations of traditional archival sources including state archives and university libraries, to a broadening of the definition of 'archive' to include documentation of bedside tables and everyday living conditions. The first chapter, 'Queer Archival Pasts', explores how archives, their selection, omissions and interpretation construct our understanding of queer legacy and identity. 'Archiving Disorder' then considers the kinds of archives resulting from the migration of queer and marginalised communities, whether by the state in the form of traditional records such as migration documentation or by the communities themselves. 'Exhibiting Archives/Archiving Exhibits' focuses on artistic interventions and constructions in queer archives. Finally, 'Classifications and the Limits of the Archive' critiques the trustworthiness of the archive as an institution which is often interpreted as a repository of historical truth.A thread that reappears throughout the essays is how archives do, or do not, cope with the nature and excesses of queer history and experience. Abram J Lewis's account of transgender activist Angela Keyes Douglas and the chaos of her life and work attempts to push against efforts to rehabilitate the image of queer activists and instead embraces the eccentric and paranoid nature of Keyes' life and archive as key elements of its queerness. Marc Stein's research regarding the periodical Drum, 'the self-described "gay Playboy"' (p. 53), a key 1960s homophile publication, further underscores this point. Stein states Drum is frequently omitted from studies of the pre-Stonewall gay movement in favour of more respectable publications and groups due to its sexual radicalism, despite having a substantially larger reach than other homophile publications at the time. Stein posits that queer representation within the archive should not omit the elements which made those lives queer.It should be noted that the archive presented here is fr...
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