Archival Activism, Symbolic Annihilation, and the LGBTQ2+ Community Archive

  • Elspeth H. Brown

Abstract

LGBTQ2+ community archives, often founded in the 1970s and 1980s, are no longer necessarily outside the archival mainstream from the perspective of non-white, and non-cis LGBTQ2+ people. Histories of whiteness, settler-colonialism, and cisnormativity within the LGBTQ2+ community archive can create the “symbolic annihilation” of trans and Black, Indigenous, and people of colour (BIPOC) histories within the queer community archive, if left unaddressed. Our current moment requires an active reimagining of what activism means within legacy LGBTQ2+ community, activist archives. This article describes my efforts, as a volunteer and board member at the ArQuives and as the director of the LGBTQ2+ Oral History Digital Collaboratory, to help bring an intersectional, trans-inclusive framework to an LGBTQ2+ community archive with origins in Canada’s gay liberation movement. The Collaboratory is a five-year digital history research collaboration, funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, that connects archives across Canada and the United States to produce a collaborative digital history hub for the research and study of gay, lesbian, queer, and trans oral histories. We have four archival partners: the ArQuives (formerly the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives); the Digital Transgender Archive; the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria; and the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony. In this article, I focus on the Collaboratory’s efforts to bring trans visibility to the ArQuives’ collections.

RÉSUMÉ

Les archives de la communauté LGBTQ2+, souvent établies dans les années 1970 et 1980, ne se situent plus nécessairement à l’extérieur des courants archivistiques dominants du point de vue des individus LGBTQ2+ non blancs et non-cis. Les histoires blanches, colonialistes et cisnormatives dans les archives de la communauté LGBTQ2+ peuvent entraîner l’«annihilation symbolique » des histoires des trans de même que des noirs, des autochtones et des autres personnes racisées au sein des archives de la communauté queer si elles ne sont pas abordées. La situation actuelle exige que l’on s’emploie à réimaginer ce que l’activisme représente dans l’héritage des archives militantes de la communauté LGBTQ2+. Cet article décrit mes efforts en tant que bénévole et membre du conseil aux ArQuives et comme directrice du LGBTQ2+ Oral History Digital Collaboratory afin d’encourager l’adoption d’un cadre de travail intersectionnel et inclusif pour les trans dans les archives communautaires de la communauté LGBTQ2+, lesquelles trouvent leurs origines dans le mouvement de libération gaie au Canada. Le Collaboratory est un projet collaboratif de recherche en histoire numérique, subventionné par le Conseil de recherche en sciences humaines du Canada, mettant en contact des archives du Canada et des États-Unis pour créer un centre collaboratif d’histoire numérique pour la recherche et les études des histoires orales des gays, lesbiennes, queer et trans. Nos partenaires sont quatre archives : les ArQuives (anciennement les Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives), le Digital Transgender Archive, les Transgender Archives à l’Université de Victoria, et les Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony. Dans cet article, je mets l’accent sur les efforts du Collaboratory pour rendre les trans visibles dans les collections des ArQuives.

Author Biography

Elspeth H. Brown

Elspeth H. Brown is a professor of history at the University of Toronto. Her research concerns queer and trans history, the history and theory of photography, the history of US capitalism, and oral history. She is the author of Work! A Queer History of Modeling (Duke University Press, 2019) and The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884–1929 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). She is co-editor of Feeling Photography (Duke University Press, 2014, with Thy Phu), “Queering Photography,” a special issue of Photography and Culture (2014), and Cultures of Commerce: Representation and American Business Culture, 1877–1960 (Palgrave, 2006). She is the Director of the LGBTQ Oral History Digital Collaboratory – a five-year digital and oral history public, digital humanities collaboration – and co-investigator for the Family Camera Network. She is an active volunteer and vice president of the board for the ArQuives: Canada’s LGBTQ2+ Archives.

Archivaria 89 cover: image of Hon Lu with his cousin, Shanobi Lam
Published
2020-05-10
How to Cite
Brown, Elspeth H. 2020. “Archival Activism, Symbolic Annihilation, and the LGBTQ2+ Community Archive”. Archivaria 89 (May), 6-33. https://archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/13729.
Issue
Archivaria 89 (Spring 2020)
Section
Articles

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