‘To raise a village, fall far from the tree’: Methods for queer kinship pasts, presents and futures

Abstract

How can we understand queer kinship as it is experienced in the present, without inadvertently fixing its meaning, ignoring the (in)flexibility of memory, or failing to capture its continued evolution? We argue that through recognition of the stickiness of family and kinship characterized variously by pain, joy, tradition, contrariness, and connection, we can find routes to collectively imagine queer futures. Based on an ongoing collaboration between a sociologist and an artist, this paper considers what a queer approach to collating and exploring experiences of kinship may produce. We recount our experiments in implementing methods that allow us to narrate our (queer) relationship to kinship with acknowledgement of the fragments of diverse pasts, embodied presents, and wished for futures. We offer examples of how we might celebrate randomness and interruption, and curate ongoing disruption to linear inheritances and transmission of meaning. We show how these methods can offer opportunities to recursively deconstruct and reconstruct our personal and shared histories, creating unfinished, chaotic, glitchy, and always-becoming stories of queer kinship.