Rather, it’s a complex, evolving structure defined by the institutions that serve as portals to cultural material—museums, libraries, courts, and archives like this one. (or deny) access to materials that traverse in and out of the public domain. But as an institutional construct, the public domain can easily fail to reflect any true nature of “the public;” without careful consideration, access to the public domain ends up repeating and perpetuating, in a highly predictable way, the whatsapp lead same oppressive structures that govern society and culture.
What can be done? It’s crucial that we carefully examine our archives and search for lost voices, stories of failure, non-linear trajectories, and other non-conventional perspectives.
We must refuse to accept traditional timelines at face value, and work to amplify marginalized material that has otherwise gone unnoticed, or erased. When confronting an archive or any presentation of historic cultural material, it’s irresponsible not to ask urgent questions like: What forces shaped this? Who was excluded?
Who else should be included here in order to better understand the material at hand? Once engaged, we can actively work to change the shape of history, giving it dimension and depth and greater representation for all who were involved. This is what I’ve been calling queer archive work.
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