Paper Short Abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork conducted in queer archives and inspired by Muñoz’s take on queerness as hope and utopia (2009), this paper discusses queer archives’ potential roles in creating space for hope(ing) and dreaming and shaping pathways to queer futures. What dreams are made possible by creating, handling, preserving queer heritage?

Paper Abstract:

In his influential work Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (2009), José Esteban Muñoz states that the future “is queerness’s domain”. Queerness is an ideal, a utopia, and closely connected to dreaming insofar as it is an exercise of hope and a rejection of the here and now, projecting itself as a potentiality and possibility of future.

In this paper, I will direct my gaze towards the queer archive as a central part of queer memory-making, utopia and dreaming. Drawing on my fieldwork in different archives, where I observed and interviewed archivists and volunteers, I discuss how handling and preserving memory is deeply rooted in the past while aiming at creating changes and possibilities for the future. Inspired by Muñoz’s take on queerness as hope and utopia, this paper addresses queer archives’ role in and potential for creating space for hope(ing) and dreaming. What dreams are made possible by creating, handling, preserving queer heritage? And what does it take for a community to be entitled to dream?

I am interested in how queer archives – both as sites and as agents – contribute to opening up new paths for (un)writing (queer) history through their archival work and information practices. The materiality of the archive opens doors to feelings and to dreaming of an altered reality. By handling and preserving queer history, the archive allows for queer futures to be dreamed of and hoped for.