Activist Emotions: Gay Radicalism and Melancholic Attachments

Abstract

It has been argued recently that Australian historians have overlooked histories of emotion. In this article, through the life-history analysis of two long-standing Sydney gay activists, I trace the emotional currents of radical gay activism and suggest these histories point to a wider story of Left melancholy in the closing decades of the twentieth century. I argue that their melancholia is not a trauma-like despair but surprisingly is tinged with a sustaining hope.