This presentation discusses the intertwined nature of life stories and cultural memory in studying queer pasts and memories. The possibility of constructing a queer life stories is dependent on the cultural figures and representations of queer. In order to tell one’s life as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or otherwise queer ...
(Show more)This presentation discusses the intertwined nature of life stories and cultural memory in studying queer pasts and memories. The possibility of constructing a queer life stories is dependent on the cultural figures and representations of queer. In order to tell one’s life as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or otherwise queer person, one needs to have available framings and identity labels with which to construct an intelligible queer life. Moreover, researchers working on life stories from queer perspectives deploy cultural understanding of queer to interpret pasts in these personal accounts. Oral history and life story sources are have played an important role in queer historiography and public history as few other sources can tell of the past from the queer subjects’ perspective. Thus, the life stories that deploy cultural understandings of queer, also construct and articulate queer cultural memory and produce public understandings of queer life.
This presentation addresses questions concerning queer life stories and queer cultural memory in Finnish and Estonian contexts, based on analysis of life stories, collections in which these are gathered as well as archives and public history. The presentation discusses how the possibilities for telling, researching and utilising queer life stories have changed from the 1990s to 2010s.
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