Historiography Turns Me On
Nov. 20th, 2017 11:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrj (LHMP #161 Traub 2016 Thinking Sex with the Early Moderns)
Usually I just post the link to the week's LHMP entry, but this time I think I'll reproduce my entire introduction
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This is a very theory-intensive book -- historiography rather than history, and not well suited for the casual reader. But there are some great discussions that made it worth tackling. The writing is very dense and my summary only touches on the outlines of the discussion rather than its specifics. Although theories about how we study and interpret history might seem rather removed from the process of writing lesbian historical fiction, from another angle, the two fields have a great deal of overlap. Consider the question of whether our approach to history is focused on finding identity with our own specific experiences and relationships, or whether we are seeking to understand and appreciate people whose lives have connections with ours but also wide areas of difference. Do we seek to find/write "lesbians in history" from a very narrow definition of the word "lesbian" or do we seek to find/write themes of women's same-sex relationships expressed in a multitude of ways? Do we consider sexual activity to be a necessary defining aspect of those persons we study/write under the rubric of "lesbian" or is it only one of a cluster of important themes? Historical fiction (not just lesbian historical fiction but the entire field) has a pervasive uneasiness around how closely similar historical figures need to be made to modern mindsets in order to be sympathetic to modern readers. In the specific case of lesbian historical fiction, this concern can work to delegitimize the very concept of lesbians in history, just as some historical theories work to erase lesbians as a topic of valid study. And that's why I love finding the parallels in books like this to my own thought processes around the project of writing.
Usually I just post the link to the week's LHMP entry, but this time I think I'll reproduce my entire introduction
* * *
This is a very theory-intensive book -- historiography rather than history, and not well suited for the casual reader. But there are some great discussions that made it worth tackling. The writing is very dense and my summary only touches on the outlines of the discussion rather than its specifics. Although theories about how we study and interpret history might seem rather removed from the process of writing lesbian historical fiction, from another angle, the two fields have a great deal of overlap. Consider the question of whether our approach to history is focused on finding identity with our own specific experiences and relationships, or whether we are seeking to understand and appreciate people whose lives have connections with ours but also wide areas of difference. Do we seek to find/write "lesbians in history" from a very narrow definition of the word "lesbian" or do we seek to find/write themes of women's same-sex relationships expressed in a multitude of ways? Do we consider sexual activity to be a necessary defining aspect of those persons we study/write under the rubric of "lesbian" or is it only one of a cluster of important themes? Historical fiction (not just lesbian historical fiction but the entire field) has a pervasive uneasiness around how closely similar historical figures need to be made to modern mindsets in order to be sympathetic to modern readers. In the specific case of lesbian historical fiction, this concern can work to delegitimize the very concept of lesbians in history, just as some historical theories work to erase lesbians as a topic of valid study. And that's why I love finding the parallels in books like this to my own thought processes around the project of writing.
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