The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship after Fascism

by Jennifer V. Evans

In The Queer Art of History Jennifer V. Evans examines postwar and contemporary German history to broadly argue for a practice of queer history that moves beyond bounded concepts and narratives of identity. Drawing on Black feminism, queer of color critique, and trans studies, Evans points out that although many rights for LGBTQI people have been gained in Germany, those rights have not been enjoyed equally. There remain fundamental struggles around whose bodies, behaviors, and communities belong. Evans uses kinship as an analytic category to identify the fraught and productive ways that Germans have confronted race, gender nonconformity, and sexuality in social movements, art, and everyday life. Evans shows how kinship illuminates the work of solidarity and intersectional organizing across difference and offers an openness to forms of contemporary and historical queerness that may escape the archive’s confines. Through forms of kinship, queer and trans people test out new possibilities for citizenship, love, and public and family life in postwar Germany in ways that question claims about liberal democracy, the social contract, and the place of identity in rights-based discourses.

Genres: Queer, History, LGBT, Nonfiction, Politics, Art

312 pages, Paperback

Published April 21, 2023

Reviews

[Lauren Levitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book proposes kinship as a better way to understand queer history than identity. I think it is timely because it challenges the recent left-wing attacks on non-normative forms of gender and sexuality. I especially enjoyed the chapter on photography as history, especially the exploration of intergenerational sex as part of queer subcultural formation. I wasn’t quite sure what Evans meant by “kinship” however. At times it seems uses it to mean “affinity” and at other times “political coalition.” In the last chapter she finally defines it as “solidarity across difference.” However, I wonder if using kinship this metaphorical way doesn’t dilute it’s meaning too much.

[Emory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Following in the footsteps of Laura Doan and other Americanists, Evans' 2023 work The Queer Art of History: Queer Kinship after Fascism applies queer theory, trans* studies, queer of color theory, and Black feminist theory ideas as a means of reexamining Post-War German history in a new light. The book --which progresses thematically through various case studies throughout Post-War Germany-- acts as an intervention in the historiography, demonstrating the value in examinations of queerness detached from identity-label-oriented histories.

For the general public, The Queer Art of History may be somewhat inaccessible as a quick read. Evans pulls from a LOT of theory in this book, and those unfamiliar with key scholars in the fields previously listed may find themselves struggling to follow along with her arguments. For those at least cursorily familiar with queer theory, however, this book makes some INCREDIBLY cogent and compelling arguments.

Not a book for the feint of heart, but massively interesting and insightful for those willing to do the work to follow it.

[Fabiana · Rating 4 out of 5]

while i skimmed the beginning chapters, i honed in from chapter 3-epilogue and honestly “violent history” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

the epilogue was by far the most pertinent part, after traversing through decades of vicious fighting+ queer history for some semblance of genealogy/visibility in the previous chapters, its direction was on seeing the opposition to expanding identities on all sides of the political spectrum.

(mildly depressing might i add)