The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography

Traub, Valerie

doi:10.1002/9780470690864.ch7

Cited by 35 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…The concept of topos, as developed by Huhtamo, 70 and the queer historiography of Valerie Traub, 71 which deals in matters of revived salience, both presume disjuncture, but also deal in disconnected connectivity, and point towards ways to elaborate our thesis. Their explorations of the temporal dynamics of various tropes or topoi (those of the body for Traub, of the technological for Huhtamo), allow them to consider histories of disjuncture but also to explore long-standing and sustained connections and recurrences.…”

Section: Confident Predictions That the Expansion Of Automation Will mentioning

confidence: 97%

Automation Now and Then: Automation Fevers, Anxieties and Utopias

Bassett¹,

Roberts²

2019

New Formations

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This article discusses the cyclical nature of automation anxiety and examines ways of thinking about the recurrence of automation debates in culture, particularly with reference to the 1950s, 1960s and today. It draws on the concept of topos, developed by Erkki Huhtamo, to explore the return of automation anxieties (and fevers) and the relationship between material formations and technological imaginaries. We focus in particular on recent left thinking where automation is used to invoke a postcapitalist utopia. Examples include Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams's Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (2015) and Aaron Bastani's Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto (2018). This strand of contemporary thinking is re-framed through our return to early automation scares emerging in the late 1960s. We explore engagements between labour, civil rights, left public intellectuals, and emerging industrial figures, over questions of automation and work. We pay particular attention to questions of 'who benefits and when?' These are germane to the question of utopian futures or non-reformist reformism as it recurs today. What interests us here is the concept of revived salience: not only how the tropes evident in these debates are revived and re-embedded today, but how do they find their force, and what do they imply.

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Section: Confident Predictions That the Expansion Of Automation Will mentioning

confidence: 97%

Automation Now and Then: Automation Fevers, Anxieties and Utopias

Bassett¹,

Roberts²

2019

New Formations

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show abstract

“…The category lesbian and the presentation of “inverts” gained greater cultural significance after the Second World War, but it was still treated as a neurotic sickness (Hopkins, , ; Jennings, ). These cultural shifts in the understanding of gender and sexuality mean that the early and mid‐twentieth century is a particularly challenging period for historians conducting lesbian history (see Traub, ).…”

Section: The Queer Feminist Context Of Early Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Queer signs: The women of the British projective test movement

Hubbard

2017

J History Behavioral Science

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As queer history is often hidden, historians must look for "signs" that hint at queer lives and experiences. When psychologists use projective tests, the search for queer signs has historically been more literal, and this was especially true in the homophobic practices of Psychology in the mid-twentieth century. In this paper, I respond to Elizabeth Scarborough's call for more analytic history about the lesser known women in Psychology's history. By focusing on British projective research conducted by lesbian psychologist June Hopkins, I shift perspective and consider, not those who were tested (which has been historically more common), but those who did the testing, and position them as potential queer subjects. After briefly outlining why the projective test movement is ripe for such analysis and the kinds of queer signs that were identified using the Rorschach ink blot test in the mid-twentieth century, I then present June Hopkins' (1969, 1970) research on the "lesbian personality." This work forms a framework upon which I then consider the lives of Margaret Lowenfeld, Ann Kaldegg, and Effie Lillian Hutton, all of whom were involved in the British projective test movement a generation prior to Hopkins. By adopting Hopkins' research to frame their lives, I present the possibility of this ambiguous history being distinctly queer.

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“…Yet there are also recent calls to remember the importance of continuity. In lesbian history, Valerie Traub has argued that, rather than privileging the alterity of the past -the distinctive otherness of sexual meanings and experience -historians should confidently explore similarities and what she terms the recurring cycles of salience across different periods, for example parallel structures of intimacy, in their historical context (Traub 2007;Vicinus 2004).…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The historic house and its past inhabitants are always just a partial reflection of the present self and sexual subjectivity. The urge to merge past and present in understanding same-sex desire and relationships is constantly brought up short by the realisation of the difference of the past (Traub 2007;Taussig 1993). In seeking 'the same', we are always struck by alterity.…”

mentioning

confidence: 98%

Going on an outing: the historic house and queer public history

Oram

2011

Rethinking History

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Using the metaphor of ghosting, this article examines the ways in which lesbian, gay, queer (and other) visitors have looked for sexual dissidence in historic houses and their former inhabitants by exploring the complicated processes through which visitors both identify with those queer past lives, and experience a sense of otherness or historical distance from them. It focuses in particular on two sites: Plas Newydd, home of the Ladies of Llangollen; and Sissinghurst, the garden created by writer Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson. The article questions the distinction (and often implicit hierarchy) made by academic historians between identification and queering, between similarity and otherness, in public history. Identifying historical figures as having had same-sex relationships is important in constructing a sense of selfhood for many queer women and men. Visiting a significant historic site can therefore be seen as an act of pilgrimage. Yet ghostly hints of the otherness (or alterity) of the past are inherent in the complexity of the historic house. This dissonance is provoked by contrary interpretations of the household's past found in biographies or published diaries of former residents, guidebooks and exhibition displays about their lives, and the interpretation strategies of curators. The materiality and spatial qualities of the old building create further narrative complexity, inevitably reflecting both distinct layers of time, and domestic layouts which support or challenge an assumed story of interior family life. These complex possible readings overlap to disrupt heteronormative presumptions about the historic house and instead reveal elements of queer domesticity.

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The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography

Cited by 35 publications

References 0 publications

Automation Now and Then: Automation Fevers, Anxieties and Utopias

Automation Now and Then: Automation Fevers, Anxieties and Utopias

Queer signs: The women of the British projective test movement

Going on an outing: the historic house and queer public history

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