Following queer traces
Abstract
A crisis-ridden beginning. Everything is brittle, the archives remain closed during the lockdown—others forever—until we track them down and take the traces seriously. Until then, the sources continue to write their stories and truths between the lines, hidden behind the thick steel doors on the lowest floor, in the subconscious, at perfect temperatures. Privileges are handed down—cultivated —and the ghosts of the margins stand before the locked fire-resistant doors, bodies lingering in the eerie corridors where voices and screams echo. It is a haunting symphony of sound. I recognize the shaky silhouettes, a story spilling over the edges and cornerstones as part of the swelling whole. I step into another archive—a shameful one that arouses me.
What does this text ask for? Risk. Because Doing Research Other- wise is fundamentally risky and messy. In the following, I reflect on the ambivalent experiences and challenges in trying to catapult a social taboo like pornography into Swiss academic discourse. But while doing so, I remain unsure whether the pornographic analysis will ever belong to the great halls of higher learning. Still, one thing is clear: my archive is pretty sexy! As a young, white lesbian but gender nonconforming scholar, I reflect on how my queerness affects and shapes my research practice and vice versa: What does Doing Research Otherwise mean? What does it imply? What are possible queer strategies for rethinking and undoing research and opposing knowledge structures?
What does this text ask for? Risk. Because Doing Research Other- wise is fundamentally risky and messy. In the following, I reflect on the ambivalent experiences and challenges in trying to catapult a social taboo like pornography into Swiss academic discourse. But while doing so, I remain unsure whether the pornographic analysis will ever belong to the great halls of higher learning. Still, one thing is clear: my archive is pretty sexy! As a young, white lesbian but gender nonconforming scholar, I reflect on how my queerness affects and shapes my research practice and vice versa: What does Doing Research Otherwise mean? What does it imply? What are possible queer strategies for rethinking and undoing research and opposing knowledge structures?
Date Issued
2025
Publication Type
Book Section
Subjects
queer theory
Language(s)
en
Editor(s)
Dixit, Anukriti | |
Rutishauser, Melina | |
Wartmann, Julia |
Publisher
Seismo Press
Access(Rights)
open.access