The main focus of the Lesbian Historic Motif Project is, of course, research on specific topics that fall within the historic scope of the Project. But the question of what gets studied, by whom, and in what context is affected by the trends, fashions, and politics of the modern academic community. Who is doing that primary research? Who are they in conversation with (or arguing against)? What topics will be accepted as appropriate to the scope of their academic careers and which ones can they only tackle if they have job security? What are the frameworks within which topics of queer history can be discussed? How does the existing academic language shape both what is studied and how it is interpreted?
These are all questions that play out in meta-discussions that sometimes are interesting enough on their own to make it into this blog. (Or, more often, appear in collections that also include primary topics, such as the wonderful The Lesbian Premodern collection that I had so much fun with.) Discussions like this one remind me that there are some foundational texts that I haven't covered yet, in part because they're so foundational that you can glean the gist of their relevant content simply from the way other authors react to it. But there are a couple other reasons why I've put off tackling some key works like Foucault, Boswell, Cadden, and Dinshaw. In some cases, it's because they were created before the major surge in queer historical writing and focus on issues that feel like they're taken for granted now. In some cases it's because they focus so heavily on male topics (or heterosexual topics, or both) that I know I'll spend a lot of reading time for very little relevant content. (And will spend a lot of time commenting on how the arguments and conclusions of the work unwarrantedly assume the centrality of male/hetersexual issues.) But maybe I should identify a couple months to focus on these foundational, theory-heavy texts and just get them out of the way.
Comments