Status Updates From If Memory Serves: Gay Men, ...

Interesting take on how modern homosexual identity was built upon a nostalgia for a certain sort of over-sexual time waster that had no place in the industrial revolution. Definitely need to read more on how the homosexual identity formed around this time.

I also really like the part on patchy memory as a spot for imagination to take hold

"While memories are conventionally assumed to be relatively transparent retrievals of directly experienced pasts, we understand memory differently."

Conventionally here seems to be used in reference to laymen. They briefly engage with psychological understanding of memory, but it's a shame that in a book so very much about the history of memory, there is not much engagement with historical thought relating to memory

As I start on this reread, several years down the line, I wonder how this will slot in with my increased (though never, ever satisfactory) knowledge of queer history and social philosophy.

I remember it being an impactful and hopeful analysis of why we struggle to connect with a queer past. I'm interested in how this may interact with the larger alienation experience of capitalism