Abstract
ABSTRACT This paper aims to offer an understanding of the body as an archive while analysing poems written by queer and non-binary poet and performer Danez Smith. Seen as a conflicting field for power and control disputes, the archive can be read in different ways and this paper approaches it in order to theorise what a queer archival practice may signal when elements such as gender, sexuality and desire are interrogated in Smith’s poems. Taking into consideration theoretical contributions from Celia Pedrosa et al. (2018), Julietta Singh (2018), David Lapoujade (2017), Ann Cvetkovich (2003) and others, it is concluded that Smith’s poems display a complex negotiation of feeling and the world, allowing new meanings to erupt from the archive.
Highlights
IntroductionNarratives, stories – these are elements the archive offers us and which we may choose to overlook in favour of more positive or bright-looking models
This paper aims to offer an understanding of the body as an archive while analysing poems written by queer and non-binary poet and performer Danez Smith
Such reading unmistakably leads us to the archive and the ways in which it is read: if the past is in the present as a haunting, what does it mean to assess the present as a problem? what does it mean to approach the archive and understand that we cannot come to terms with what it offers us – all the ugly and backward feelings (NGAI, 2005; LOVE, 2009) we do not want to partake anymore? What does it mean to queer the archive in an attempt to understand this spectrality?
Summary
Narratives, stories – these are elements the archive offers us and which we may choose to overlook in favour of more positive or bright-looking models This affirmative turn, one oriented by happiness and positive narratives, is criticised by several theorists such as Sara Ahmed (2010) and Heather Love (2009) because both understand that ignoring the past and the difficult objects it offers is not going to help the present or even the future. It is a wiser and more fruitful move to approach the hauntings from our archives not with the aim of making peace, but with an eye to making sure they are integral parts of
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