“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

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 LGBTQIA+ communities 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.

Citation

Wagner, T.L. (2024), "“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", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 80 No. 6, pp. 1367-1383. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-01-2024-0025