“COME INTO THE BLACK AND LIVE”: BLACK LGBTQ RESISTANCE TO ARCHIVAL ERASURE

Targeted book bans, anti-Critical Race Theory political campaigns, and “Don’t Say Gay”/anti-transgender bills: these attacks on Black LGBTQ people’s voices, histories, and communities are but some of the modern manifestations of the United States’ anti-Black and anti-LGBTQ foundations. This study argues that historical Black queer and transgender alienation within the language, institutions, and landscapes of the United States is a concentrated effort to maintain a white supremacist, heteronormative archetype of the American nation and its citizenry. I suggest that the spatial-historical disenfranchisement of Black LGBTQ people is a multi-pronged effort to destroy Black LGBTQ voices and histories that would contradict the rhetoric of life and liberty that defines the United States’ global persona. I begin my study by proposing a central engine of the country’s perpetuity, which I call “the archive.” I propose that “the archive” functions to reconstruct and reinforce the United States’ power as a nation-state through the constant (re)creation and (re)enforcement of historical narratives, geographic boundaries, and ideologies that maintain the nation’s power. Central to this study, however, is the conceptualization of the methods by which Black LGBTQ people subvert their erasure by “the archive.” “come into the black and live”: Black LGBTQ Resistance to Archival Erasure employs a multi-modal, multi-disciplinary approach to examining the practices of Black queer and transgender insurgent archiving and its ability to refuse destruction by “the archive.” I contend that, through subversive and performative acts of refusal of “the archive’s” power, Black queer and transgender people are able to embed insurgent archives into the narratives, geographies, and institutions created by “the archive.” These insurgent archives, I argue, preserve Black LGBTQ voices, narratives, and geographies from total destruction. Analyzing archival material, film, literature, and drag performance, I ultimately propose that these acts of insurgent archiving permit cross-temporal, cross-geographic connections between Black LGBTQ figures and communities. In its totality, my study builds upon performative, critical geographical, and critical archival theories to propose how methods of Black LGBTQ self-articulation through insurgent archiving can offer insight into the projects of Black queer futurity.