“We are openly, proudly Subjective … This history is important to our contemporary survival”: queer embodied knowledge and the curatorial work of ICT-based LGBTQIA+ history content creators
| Date | 05 June 2024 |
| Pages | 1367-1383 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2024-0025 |
| Published date | 05 June 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Travis L. Wagner |
“We are openly, proudly
Subjective …This history is
important to our contemporary
survival”: queer embodied
knowledge and the curatorial work
of ICT-based LGBTQIA+history
content creators
Travis L. Wagner
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign,
Champaign, Illinois, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This article reports on findings from interviews with ICT-based content creators whose work
focuses on documenting and curating queer history and culture. The research specifically examines how as
amateur historians, the participant’s embodied knowledge plays a central role in how they engage with
discourse about queer historical figures, methods of queer historiography and community accountability.
Design/methodology/approach –The research deploys a queer constructivist framework to qualitatively
gather and analyzes the semi-structured interviews of 31 North American content creators who curate digital
project related to queer history and culture. The interviews were gathered between August 2022 and
August 2023.
Findings –The research highlights how the subjectivity of queer embodiment aids, rather than hinders,
participants’ability to collaborate with LGBTQIAþcommunities while also addressing more significant
ethical questions around intersectionality and inclusive historiographic work.
Research limitations/implications –The content creators’own positionality and commitments to
community accountability and queer inclusivity fostered richer stories and historical documentation, while
also helping make visible queer identity as affirming and valuable within queer culture. Additionally, practical
implications include highlighting the value of ICT-based content within the distribution of educational and
informational resources related to queer history.
Originality/value –This research offers an underexamined intersection of historiography and queer
embodiment. While extensive scholarship on institutional and community-based historiography work exist the
content creators interviewed within this study exist within the space of both, often using a combination of
embodied knowledge and traditional curatorial work to translate between such spaces, inviting, in turn, new
ways of thinking about queer archival knowledge.
Keywords Information and communication technologies, Archives, Digital communications,
Embodied knowledge, Information practices, Digital curation, LGBTQ, Content creators, Queer history
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Information and communication technologies (ICTs) help facilitate counter-discursive
maneuvers against institutional powers that render historically marginalized populations
absent from the discussion. Yet, these same technologies threaten to perpetuate ongoing
exclusionary practices through design choices that remain rooted in normative ideologies.
Journal of
Documentation
1367
The author would like to thank Nicolas Vera for his asssitance during the coding process.
Declaration of Interest Statement: There exist no declarations of interest for this project.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 31 January 2024
Revised 14 April 2024
Accepted 7 May 2024
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1367-1383
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-01-2024-0025
Archives exist at a unique intersection within this institution, reckoning with the liberatory
potentialsof ICTs in two marked ways.First, as Terry Cook (2013) observes,archives originally
functioned as toolsfor state power, but postmodern shiftstowards more participatory models
of archiving resulted in understanding memory-making processes as necessarily communal.
Further, with the riseof community-based archival principles, the role of identity hasbecome
both contestedand deeply contextual. Second,within digital-first ecosystems, archives, which
traditionallyserved as repositoriesthat housed and curatedphysical materials,faced increased
demands for digital access (Prescott and Hughes, 2018). Entrenched within this debate are
queer community histories. As queer history increases in visibility, questions of who gets to
curate queer history and what expert knowledge looks like remains debated (Caswell et al.,
2016). Curatorial ethics and praxis for working with queer archives occur institutionally and
communally and examine the pros and cons of both while resolutely emphasizing the
immeasurablevalue of centering and learningfrom LGBTIQAþindividualswho documented
and created queer history (Cifor, 2022;Apple, 2021).
Absent from this discussion are individuals who engage in history work on ICTs using
platforms ranging from personal websites to emergent social media platforms.Further, while
many of the content creators at the forefront of this ICT-driven queer history work are
academically credentialed historians associated with legitimate historical inquiry, an equal
amount are amateur historians passionate about makingvisible queer history. Whilethe term
amateur usually denotes a lack of authority, as Carolyn Dinshaw (2012) suggests a
“detachment”from scholarly production, when it comes to queer historiography, affords
amateursvaluable “attachment”to embodied relationshipsto history (p. 6). To understand this
gap in scholarshipat the intersectionof embodied, queer amateurhistoriography andto explore
how ICT-basedqueer history contentcreators utilize such embodiedknowledge in their content
creation, I report on findings from semistructured interviews with 31 content creators who
utilize ICTs to curate LGBTQIAþhistory. My findings highlight critical insights about the
unique value provided to queer historiography at the intersection of ICT-based media and
digital information access. Findingsinclude the role of embodied identityin informing content
creator’sdesire to see queer historymade digitally accessible.Additionally, thecontent creators
across these varied ICTs make their work collaborative, community-affirming historical
narratives.Finally, these contentcreators acknowledgethe value of their embodied visibilityin
offeringqueer-affirming narrativesto other LGBTQIAþindividualsseeking historicalproof of
their existence. I conclude by highlighting both the theoretical and practical implications of
understanding and learning from the embodied knowledge and curatorial practices of ICT-
based queer history content creators. These findings prioritize how cultural heritage
practitioners might collaborate with and support the ongoing work of these content creators
rather thanextracting from or co-optingsuch radical work. Before this,however, I offer a brief
primer on the terms utilizedfor discussing queer embodiment.
A note on terminology
I utilize the queer inunison LGBTQIAþindividuals, communities, and scholars whoreclaim
the term as a method for challenging the normative underpinnings of a profoundly
heteronormative and cisnormativesociety. Heteronormativity refers to societal discourse that
all persons are presumed heterosexual,and, as such, spaces, policies, and technologies reflect
the needsof heterosexual persons (Warner,1993). Cisnormativitypresumes that all personsare
cisgenderor that their genderidentity matches theirsex assigned at birth(Mathers et al., 2018). I
deploy the concept of cisheteronormativity as a way of labeling and attending to both
ideologies. I use queer when discussing questions of ethics and communal actions aimed at
challengingnot only anti-queerand queer exclusionarysocial practicesbut also as a method for
identifying how participants and their communities challenge normative historiographic
JD
80,6
1368
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