This article is an investigation into the archive and historical methodology. The paper investigates the implications of queer theorist Lee Edelman’s Lacanian influenced take on the sinthom (“sinthomosexual”). What does negativity (in its Lacanian sense) indicate in the field of history? Is it the untouchable past per se (as opposed ...
(Show more)This article is an investigation into the archive and historical methodology. The paper investigates the implications of queer theorist Lee Edelman’s Lacanian influenced take on the sinthom (“sinthomosexual”). What does negativity (in its Lacanian sense) indicate in the field of history? Is it the untouchable past per se (as opposed to written history) and, if so, what does this place called the archive really consist of? This problematization is put in relation to literary queer scholars Cvetkovich’s and Halberstam’s call for a “queer archive of feelings” and the art exhibition Lost and Found – Queerying the Archive. This queer(ed) archive is described as a unique and radical queer activism while the traditional archive is scorned as excluding queer and/or feelings.
As most historians are well aware of, however, an archive is always founded with the future in mind. Even though most archives do not exist for the historian, they have a bureaucratic function directed towards guaranteeing a “recollection” of a certain institutional organization and societal status quo. Since this quest can also be discerned in Cvetkovich, et al, as well as in many other queer circumstances concerning temporality, I propose that a radical (non-)historiography is necessary where neither the future, nor history, can serve as legitimate ontologies for political claims.
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