Who Is the Subject? Queer Theory Meets Oral History

• Published in: Journal of the history of sexuality Vol. 17; no. 2; pp. 177 - 189
• Main Author: Boyd, Nan Alamilla
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Austin, TX University of Texas Press 01.05.2008; University of Texas at Austin (University of Texas Press)
• Subjects: Anthropology, Cultural - education; Anthropology, Cultural - history; Belonging; Citizenship; Coming out; Ethnology; Female; Female homosexuality; Foucauldian analysis; Gay communities; Gays & lesbians; Gays and lesbians; Gender Identity; Heterosexuality; Historians; Historiography; History; History and organization of sociology; History and present state; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; History, theory and methodology; Homosexuality; Homosexuality - ethnology; Homosexuality - history; Homosexuality - physiology; Homosexuality - psychology; Homosexuality, Female - ethnology; Homosexuality, Female - history; Homosexuality, Female - psychology; Homosexuality, Male - ethnology; Homosexuality, Male - history; Homosexuality, Male - psychology; Humans; Ideology; Interviews as Topic; Lesbianism; Male; Memory - physiology; Methods; Morality; Narration - history; Narrative history; Narrators; Oral history; Politics; Prejudice; Public Opinion; Queer culture; Queer studies; Queer theory; R&D; Research & development; Research Design; Research methodology; Sex (Psychology); Sexual behavior; Sexual Behavior - ethnology; Sexual Behavior - history; Sexual Behavior - physiology; Sexual Behavior - psychology; Sexual behaviour; Sexuality; Social Behavior; Social Change - history; Social Conditions - economics; Social Conditions - history; Social Conditions - legislation & jurisprudence; Social history; Social Perception; Sociology; Stereotyping; Subjectivity; United States - ethnology; United States; Research field; History; Orality; Subject
• ISSN: 1043-4070; 1535-3605; 1535-3605
• DOI: 10.1353/sex.0.0009

The texts I discuss, in chronological order, include John D'Emilio's Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities (1983), Allan Bérubé's Coming Out under Fire (1990), Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline Davis's Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold (1993), Esther Newton's Cherry Grove, Fire Island (1993), George Chauncey's Gay New York (1994), and John Howard's Men like That (1999).4 I'll also offer some methodological comments on my own publication, Wide-Open Town (2003).5 This essay explores how researchers-mostly historians but also a few anthropologists-have grappled with the challenge queer theory poses to oral history in its dependence both on self-knowing-that is, that narrators will be able to articulate a coherent or consistent representation of themselves as historical actors-and on transparent subjectivity-that is, that historians can somehow come to know these "selves" through their self-descriptions. Michel Foucault argues in The History of Sexuality that the discursive or cultural construction of the sexual self emerged at the same time as the rise of the modern nation-state and is linked to modern notions of citizenship.6 In other words, broad categories of national or cultural belonging (citizenship) have become dependent on meanings attached to sexual behavior (good/bad, moral/immoral, legal/criminal) and have produced the concept of sexual identity (heterosexual/homosexual).