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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper proposes to explore the relation to voice, presence and absence within queer history in India, considering historiographical literature on queer heritage with current initiatives on archival activism.

Paper Abstract:

The lack of archives has been a central concern for feminist, queer and decolonial historiography, as the erasure of traces, voices and bodies in historical sources and narratives is considered as the marker of a “subaltern” condition. If silences are relevant spaces of investigation and indignation, they are also anchored in a dualistic division of “loss and found” that scholars such as Dave and Arondekar have been questioning, the latter’s proposing an abundance-based approach to history of sexuality. This paper thus proposes to explore the relation to voice and silence in militant archive within queer movements in India, considering both literature on queer history and current political initiatives of community archives. While the anticipation of loss is an essential motivation for archiving projects, these same initiatives remain invested with power issues and class tensions intrinsic to processes of categorization and data collection, resulting in divergent sensibilities and complicating the construction of common queer memories, including in the context of competitive historical narratives with nationalist discourses. The diversity of theoretical orientations and political challenges within community archives lead us to question how to move beyond a dualistic schema of presence and absence without reducing the materiality of archives, but also to address the debates and tensions within archival activism, where the question of voice and inequalities of representation remains.