Finding the subject: Queering the archive  

Oleh:

Clarke, Danielle

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Feminist Theory vol. 5 no. 1 (Apr. 2004), page 79–83.
Topik: Queer theory
Fulltext: 79.pdf (58.69KB)

Isi artikel

Queer theory is now a well-established discipline, with an important, if often tangential relationship to traditional fields of study.1 Its institutional position as simultaneously marginal and central, neatly encapsulates the potential of queer to unsettle, de-centre and disturb. Its claims are multiple, and variably effective: radical, decentring, politically engaged. For the time being it retains its capacity to shock and ruffle feathers. However, there are clear and present dangers, particularly in relation to the very fields from which ‘queer’ emerged, namely feminism and lesbian and gay studies – it is no accident that many of the key figures of queer studies established their credentials in the field of academic activism – namely radical feminism. These areas of research are still rightly engaged in what might be called much more empirical acts, usually grouped under the label of ‘recovery’; this disjunction is increasingly becoming organized around other kinds of polarities – Anglocentric/North American; historical/contemporary; positivist/ deconstructive.2 By ‘recovery’ I mean the process of locating and positioning those subjects that had traditionally been excluded from the purview of traditional history, literary and otherwise, both by the cultural assumptions governing the creation of the archive and by the discourses of history as laid down in the 19th century. Such undertakings, of necessity, remain grounded in the categories that largely governed social history, in particular, that of gender.

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