Post-colonial historiography, queer historiography

Abstract

If sexuality as a category of historical analysis is widely acknowledged as “socially constructed” over time and place, why are historians still assuming a core set of essential qualities that unite all those scholarships they categorize under “gay and lesbian history” or “queer history”? This short position essay responds to this striking paradox in queer historiography by turning to post-colonial historiography. In doing so, it proposes the use of the historical project as an intellectual tool that challenges the discursive constructions of objects of knowledge through different historiographies (e.g., Marxism, modernism, etc.). In this attempt, the queer historical subject is conceptualized as comprising shifting historical positions under which their historical representations function as sites of contest and possibility.