Abstract
Tracing the archival oral history collection of intersex artist, Jay Kyle Petersen, this chapter focuses on oral history storytelling methods that illuminate the elasticity of time presented in and through the archival record as a queer-chronology that is unsettling for the archivist, visitors to the archives, and the archives itself. With a focus on non-normative LGBTQI+ bodies that are making their ways into the historical record through the adroit work of the archivist and oral historian, the author uses hands-on archival practice and oral history documentation strategies to elucidate nomadic subjectivities that invigorate temporal belonging in ways that actualise archives. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s “double moment” through which sedimentation and spontaneity exist together as interwoven and inseparable, this chapter interrogates the queer chronology of this generative tension. As Jay Kyle Petersen exclaims in his oral history interview, “I decided to tell my story today because it’s important I get it documented because I exist, because my life has existed and I happened.” Using a queer theoretical approach to temporal belonging, Jay’s liminal space of subjectivity offers a re-imagined perspective on the delimitations of description practices of the archives.
Original language | English (US) |
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Title of host publication | New Directions in Queer Oral History |
Subtitle of host publication | Archives of Disruption |
Publisher | Taylor and Francis |
Pages | 133-142 |
Number of pages | 10 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781000569247 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780367551148 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jan 1 2022 |
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Arts and Humanities