Memoirs of Gay Militancy: A Methodological Challenge

Abstract

Biographical and autobiographical material has long been used by sociologists. What are the specific epistemological and methodological challenges of using memoirs of militancy for social movement sociology? This article analyses four memoirs by militants of the gay movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. To understand the validity of memoirs of militancy as sociological sources, it highlights their constructedness as narrative artefacts: as retrospective discourses on an individual's past, memoirs allow for the self-reflexive deployment of their authors' subjectivity. Their narrativeness is a key to understanding how their narrative voice reflects the very agency that animates mobilizations. Memoirs of militancy are thus an invitation for sociologists to turn to literary and rhetorical scholarship for adequate methodological tools.