Introduction: Outing Archives, Archives Outing

Abstract

The first article in this special issue of CTR starts in a cool air-conditioned room in a Calcutta public archive, far removed from the intense humidity and the afternoon sun outside its protective state-sponsored walls. It is in this space that the archival visitor opens a nineteenth-century scrapbook, the fragile pages letting go of the grip of the powdery, now-disintegrated glue that once locked its contents in place. Today, more than a century later, these remains spill onto the desk, activated by the curiosity of the scholar, who is enthralled by the materials in her hands. We might ask whose lives will be outed through this archival visit, and whether the positionality of the archivist herself will be outed in tow. How has she come to have access to this protected and well-ventilated space? What will the exposures of this visit mean to the lives of those who produced the scrapbook and what will it mean for her own life and scholarship? This critical acknowledgement of the interdependence between the lives of those buried in archives and the lives of scholars and artists who breathe life into them is central to the enquiries that have been brought together in Outing Archives, Archives Outing.Archives are dominantly understood as white, Western, heteronormatively gendered endeavours, and, in the context of South Asia, the property of caste privilege. This special issue critiques such received notions of archives, with a view to theorising them instead as always already embodied sites through which histories and practices can be interrogated, critiqued, and rewritten, rather than simply replayed. In this, the editors are keen to consider 'outing' as a decolonial tactic and methodology that, through a challenge to varied prevalent hegemonies, opens up alternate and embodied possibilities through which histories

Editors' Note: Speculations on the Queerness of Dance Modernism

“…In order to engage with the overdetermined questions engendered by this situation, we take part in a conversation that began before and goes beyond the scope of our project. In particular, we are keen to acknowledge the recent special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review , “Outing Archives, Archives Outing,” edited by Melissa Blanco Borelli, Bryce Lease, and Royona Mitra (2021). The present contributions complement the latter's forms of decolonial “outing” with an expansive and experimental use of speculative intersectional queering.…”