Queer Animacies: Disorienting Materialities in Archaeology

Summary

  This essay draws from contemporary strands of affect and materiality in queer theory to discuss a network of queer animacies in the historic record.  Using examples of late 19th and early 20th century jook joints , I explore a range of affective material relationships that threaten heteronormative ideals.  This attempts to move beyond privileging sexual acts and orientations as defining queerness, towards a queer historical framework attuned to the vast network of human and material affiliations that queered social norms (Blackmore 2011).  I illustrate how spatial and material textures can create transgressive atmospheres that reciprocally stick to human bodies.  These historical ontologies and the political forces that vilified them urge us to consider a world of queer matter beyond representations of identity and sexual orientation.  They remind us of contemporary material engagements that disrupt normative conceptions of intimacy and offer a theoretical framework for queer perspectives in historical archaeology.  

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2015   •
• Queering Historical Archaeology: Methods, Theory, and Practice

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

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PaperId(s): 297