Ephemeral Material: Queering the Archive

Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies

by Alana Kumbier

Ephemeral Queering the Archive articulates a queer approach to archival studies and archival practice, and establishes the relevance of this approach beyond collections with LGBTQ content. Kumbier argues that queering the archive (thinking through queer interests, experiences, explanatory frameworks, and cultural practices) allows us to think critically about established archival principles and practices. This project describes -- and supports -- the work of archivists, community documentarians, activists, and scholars seeking to preserve materials documenting queer lives and experiences, and imagines how we might respond to the particular demands of archiving queer lives. Further, this project intervenes in the repetition of practices that may exclude LGBTQ constituencies, render our experiences less-visible/less-legible, or perpetuate oppressive power relations between archivists and users or documented subjects. The project aims to make work by scholars in history, performance studies, queer studies, and other areas of the humanities who are encountering the limits of archives -- and are developing strategies for working with them -- legible and relevant to archivists and librarians. The book supports its conceptual work with concrete examples of collecting and documentation projects, a research ethnography, and analyses of popular media that represent -- and critique -- archival spaces and practices.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Queer, Library Science, History, Research

266 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2012

Reviews

[Amy Layton · Rating 5 out of 5]

In school, I was definitely a library science track student rather than archives.  So that being said, this was the first book I've read on the topic of archives and how problematic they can be in terms of upholding certain narratives and ideologies.  

Reading this helped me better understand archives through a different lens, and it also helped me realize just how research via archives is conducted--if it can be conducted.  After all, research can be impeded by lack of documentation, lack of tagging, and even lack of knowledge on certain topics.  And, the less recent items have been archived, the less information there may be about them in the systems.  This then becomes a detriment to the researcher, who already may have few avenues to conduct their search.

Overall, this was an eye-opening read, and made me better understand and respect archives so much more.  

Review cross-listed here!

[zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a cool read, and somewhat interesting. It was just not really what I was looking for, so my rating is more about how useful I felt it was for my thesis, rather than how good the book itself was.

[Inge Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked Kumbiers theoretical framework combined with case studies, but I missed some sort of 'conclusion' at the end, with some points of what we should take away from this book/the case studies.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

While it was an interesting book and was doing some much needed work, I felt like the title was misleading. I expected it to be more about how to introduce queer theory/thinking into more traditional archival spaces, while it was really focused on archiving experiences outside of those restrictions. Again, vitally important, but not what I was really looking for and I felt disappointed.

Also, I felt like in trying to be so many things for so many perspectives that it lost focus and still somehow managed to be very jargony. I'm at least marginally aware of many of the theoretical frameworks on both the queer and archives end and I was getting lost/confused at time. It felt like the book lacked an overarching theme to tie everything together, and the lack of a conclusion made for an abrupt ending.

Still, I learned a lot about aspects of queer culture other than my own and some of the unique problems facing this population.

[Travis Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

While there are camps of archive/queer theorist doing important work, they rarely communicate with the queer archivists working in a practitioner sense. Thankfully Kumbier has connected that ever so wide gap in a clear and quite navigable manner.