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Oral Presentation Session - Cosponsored Status Awarded
Sponsored by: Association for Queer Anthropology
Cosponsored by: Association for Feminist Anthropology
Of interest to: Practicing and Applied Anthropologists, Teachers of Anthropology in Community Colleges, Students
Primary Theme: Persistence
Secondary Theme: Resistance
This panel explores the everyday relationships of queer (post)memories, archives and time. The importance of making, thinking and talking about queer memory and trauma (Cvetkovich 2003), queer approaches to loss (Crimp 1989) and unmaking of history (Castiglia and Reed: 2011, Doan 2017) emerged through efforts to preserve queer experiences of the past and provide a framework for understanding contemporary queer lives in different contexts. This panel stems from these conversations while also paying attention to non-normative memories\archives that do not depend on search and rescue models (Arondekar 2005). Through glimpses of different ways of relating to time, collectivity and inheritability this panel aims to think about (post)memory and archives through “messy itineraries of queerness” (Manalansan 2015).
• Are there alternative ways to engage with past(s) or unsettle the links between time and space that determine what can be known, when and by whom?
• How does memory transmission move beyond the limited formulas of time and normative conceptualizations of familial bonds?
• How do we conceptualize memories that circulate independently from unmarked dimensions of collective and personal memory?
Inspired by these questions and focusing on examples from India, United States, Syria and Turkey the papers, this panel bring scholars from Socio-Cultural Anthropology and Archeology to think critically about queer encounters around memory and time. Through the example of transgender rights movement in India; Nataraj looks at local categories of sexual identities that emerge within the non-normative temporal planes of activist archives. With the question of “how do contemporary queer people relate to queer pasts?” Porter-Lupu examines queer encounters with archeological trash. Drawing on narratives of Syrian LGBTIQ refugees, Saleh focuses on pre-established archives of queer memory for “queers in need of protection” and questions the links between suffering, memory and time. Karakus traces the representation of queer life and death in the archives of printed media in Turkey and examines discourses on HIV/AIDS and immunity. Through the example of trans mothers and daughters who play with the links between family, memory and time; Caliskan focuses on the concept of “queer postmemory” to explore non-normative forms of “inter-generational” transmission of memory.
Collectively, these presentations aspire to create multi-field approaches to think critically about assumptions that are often taken for granted in the study of memory and archives.
Works cited:
Arondekar, Anjali. "Without a trace: Sexuality and the colonial archive." Journal of the History of Sexuality 14.1 (2005): 10-27.
Caliskan, Dilara. "The Role of Queer Kinship in the Everyday Lives of Trans Sex Worker Women. (MA Thesis, Sabancı University) 2014
Castiglia, Christopher, and Christopher Reed. If memory serves: Gay men, AIDS, and the promise of the queer past. UMN Press, 2012.
Cvetkovich, Ann. An archive of feelings. Duke University Pr, 2003.
Crimp, Douglas. "Mourning and militancy." October 51 (1989): 3-18.
Doan, Laura. "Queer History Queer Memory: The Case of Alan Turing." GLQ 23.1 (2017): 113-136.
Manalansan, Martin F. "Queer worldings: The messy art of being global in Manila and New York." Antipode 47.3 (2015).
Elijah Edelman
Assistant Professor
Rhode Island College
Shakthi Nataraj
Graduate Student
University of California, Berkeley
Jennifer Porter-Lupu
Doctoral Student
Northwestern University
Fadi Saleh
PhD Candidate, Cultural Anthropology
University of Göttingen
Emrah Karakus
University of Arizona
Dilara Caliskan
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dilara Caliskan
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Dilara Caliskan
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign