Welcome to the Exhibit
“If biography is peering through the windows of someone’s house and describing what you see…memoir is peeking into the windows of your own life. A voyeurism of the self. An interior looting” -Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
Rethinking Queer History Through The Memoir
This archival-type inquiry project constructs a queer historical archive built on an analysis of queer memoirs. The goal: to better understand the genre of queer/trans memoir and queer/trans identities, and to reflect upon my own identity in the process.
This project is predicated on the ability of queer and trans memoirs to enact characteristics of queer and trans lives.
Gemma Killen describes the endeavor of queer historians as “attempting to ‘recover’ missing queer voices and produce stories about queer history that resist the medical and legal discourses within which they have traditionally been shrouded (2017, 60)” (McCann and Monaghan 234). The memoir does not rely on medical diagnoses or legalities to characterize LGBTQIA+ identities; instead, LGBTQIA+ individuals are able to tell their own stories outside of the discourses that frequently misrepresent them.
Queer identities vary based on self-identification and self-understanding, and differ from person to person. The form of the memoir allows writers to communicate the ways in which they conceptualize their own identity, which need not rely on generalizations, oversimplistic labels, or previous stereotypes.
The written page does not protest or oppress the writer; rather, it is a personal journal, a safe space, and a tool at the disposal of the memoir writer. The memoir gives queers the opportunity to tell their own stories as they are, external from the societal structures that try to define, stereotype, and classify them. This is precisely why the memoir should be examined as history, as it is direct insight into the inner thoughts and feelings of queer individuals at various points in time.
Emotional imprints of queerness must be viewed as historical, archival evidence. Sara Edenheim presents the possibility of a "queer archive of feelings." Characteristics of the queer archive of feelings include consisting of ephemera, being fragmented, being of magical or fictional value, fulfilling a psychic/emotional need, of everyday events, and centering on memories and feelings (McCann and Monaghan 234). The memoir fits right into the queer archive of feelings, as it fulfills an emotional/psychic need — the need to express oneself as one truly is — which is a basic human right that queer and trans individuals have been deprived of for so long.
Through an analysis of queer and trans memoirs, insight is gleaned into the ways that queer and trans lives have been lived at various points in time. Memory-as-evidence comes into play. In Cruising Utopia, José Esteban Muñoz writes of "queer evidence: an evidence that has been queered in relation to the laws of what counts as proof," explaining that "queerness has an especially vexed relationship to evidence" (65). Memory and personal stories are a form of queer evidence since they provide insight into the lives of queer individuals at various moments in time.
Navigating The Webtext
1) A summary-analysis of the twelve memoirs that informed this project. This section is intended to provide a brief overview of each memoir for interested readers. These are my own analyses, so therefore, the events that I found most notable might differ from others. The books that I have chosen are just a few of many, books that I felt captured something interesting about queer or transness, whether that be through personal identity, content, or structure.
2) A visual map highlighting the locations that the memoir writers have visited or lived. This is a reminder of the physicality of the writers and these stories. It represents an embodiment of history, giving the writing a more material spacial rendering.
3) Common themes found across the memoirs. Part of my mission in this project is to better understand the nature of queer identities by finding commonalities among the genre of queer memoir: what binds the genre together? What does this say about queer identities? The themes are presented only as direct quotes from the memoirs. This allows readers to connect the themes together themselves, encouraging them to engage actively with the webtext.
4) The final section is the theoretical framework of the project. It was created simultaneously during the process of creating the other parts.
5) There is no particular order recommended for navigating the webtext.
Processing Digital Rhetorics and an Individually-Contructed Digital Archive
1) The creation of a digital archive is shaped by its creator (s). In this case, as the queer and trans individual creating this project, I found myself confronted with the ethical dilemma of how to portray these histories of many people with identities that don't always align with my own. I came to the conclusion of the importance of transparency. Any claim at total objectivity is absolutely inaccurate. Objectivity is not my goal.
The truth of this project's exigence lies within my own desire to better understand my identity. I wanted to understand the contradictions between queer and trans studies, between theories of sexuality and gender identity. This examination of twelve memoirs is my inquiry into these contradictions.
The very process of composing this knowledge — taking information and rearraranging and reinterpreting it — helped me make sense of my life experiences and identity. In My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, memoirist Jenn Shapland writes, "Carson is changing as I write about her, and so am I" (119). Not only are these memoirs a subject of inquiry, but my own understanding of them is a point of analysis as well. Based on my experience conducting this project, I can fully testify to having had "the experience of coming upon new ideas as a result of writing" (Naming What We Know 19).
2) The memoir exists within a framework of relationality, and it allows the multi-dimensionality of queer and trans lives to take full form. This relationality breathes through the memoir, as stories are told through contact with the people who have shaped them. Jay Prosser explains, "Transgender may indeed be considered a term of relationality; it describes not simply an identity but a relation between people, within a community, or within intimate bonds" (49).
"Every women I have ever loved has left her print upon me, where I loved some invaluable piece of myself apart from me — so different that I had to stretch and grow in order to recognize her. And in that growing, we came to separation, that place where work begins. Another meeting" (Zami 255).
3) I utilize Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's framework of assemblages to understand queer and trans identities through the genre of memoir. Assemblage theory "actively links these parts together by establishing relations between them" (2), and therefore is a useful theory to understand sexual and gender identities that are largely relational. I understand the following definition of assemblage:
"An assemblage is a collection of heterogenous elements. These elements could be diverse things brought together in particular relations, such as the detritus of everyday life unearthed in an archaeological dig: bowls, cups, bones, tile, figurines and so on. This collection of things and their relations expresses something, a particular character: Etruscanness, for example. But the elements that make up an assemblage also include the qualities present (large, poisonous, find, blinding, etc.) and the affects and effectivity of the assemblage: that is, not just what it is, but what is can do. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, we do not know what an assemblage is until we find out what it can do" (Stivale).
In this case, there are multiple assemblages in play. One obvious one is the assemblage of these memoirs. What characterizes the genre of queer memoir? What are its conventions? What thematic commonalities are there? Another assemblage is that of queer and trans identities. What characteristics are common among the people writing the memoirs? What similar stories exist, and what similar motifs or images do people use to communicate their experience?
4) Furthermore, investigation into the specific genre of queer memoir highlights the genre's conventions and the similarities between among parts.
5) The digital rendering of this space provides opportunity for play. As my ideas expanded, so did the project. I used the flexbility of this digital platform to write and learn as much as I could. Without a previous model of any project like this, I avoided a critical lens on what this "should" look like and simply played.
Through the digital modality, I also was able to include a mapping element. The map is important to this project; it provides a visual of the embodiment of these stories, situating them in a physical context.
Author's Note
The “X” in the title of this project — Queer x Trans Memoir: In Sight of an Embodied History — stands for the multiplicity of queer identity. Cathy Cohen views sexual expression as “something that always entails the possibility of change, movement, redefinition, and subversive performance” (439). Change is inevitable, and queerness has never failed to ride that wave.
To the reader, thank you for being here.
Welcome to the exhibit.
This project was piloted in August 2022, made possible by a generous research grant from Chapman University. I want to thank Dr. Jan Osborn for their incredible support throughout the making of this project, as well as Jessica Bocinski.
Cover photo credits: Queer.Archive.Work, Inc.
References:
McCann, Hannah, and Whitney Monaghan. Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures.
Macmillan International, Red Globe Press, 2020.
Charles J. Stivale. Gilles Deleuze : Key Concepts. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005. EBSCOhost, discovery.ebsco.com/linkprocessor/plink?id=255b9ca9-e342-3480-bb0d-e40cb87f2921.
[Second Skins Jay Prosser]
[Naming What We Know]
[my autobiography of carson]
[Cruising Utopia]
[zami]
