Skeivt Arkiv

The Establishment of a Queer Historical Archive in Norway 2012–2015

Abstract

Preview of the text:

This essay will tell the story of the establishment of a queer archive in Norway. This chronicle also hopes to be an empirical contribution to the more theoretical discussions on queer archives per se. The construction of a new archive raises a wealth of dilemmas, particularly for those of us who have been academically raised under a deconstructivist paradigm. In his doctoral thesis about queer archiving, art historian and queer theorist Mathias Danbolt (2013, 60–3) explores the complicated landscape between (what he calls) archophilia and archophobia. How are we, in a poststructuralist academic world, to deal with the phenomena of the archive? How are we to reconcile our deconstructivist inclinations with an archive logic that is exactly about naming and categorizing?