Howard H. Chiang Ex Historia 1 Howard H. Chiang1 Princeton University On the Historiographical Politics of Queer Sexuality: Thinking across the Post-Colonial and LGBTQ2 Subjects of History Introduction Opening up the ‘archive’ of the historiography of sexuality, one immediately confronts a striking paradox: if so many historians nowadays acknowledge the ‘social constructionist’ nature of (homo)sexuality, why does a body of literature called ‘gay and lesbian history’ or ‘queer history’ still exist?3 Alternatively put, if sexuality is indeed widely recognized as ‘socially constructed’ across time and place, why are historians still assuming a core set of essential qualities that unite all those historical scholarships categorised under ‘gay and lesbian history’ or ‘queer history’, or even the ‘history of sexuality’? One might recall here David Halperin’s remark: ‘Once upon a time, the very phrase “the history of sexuality” sounded like a contradiction in terms: how, after all, could sexuality have a history? Nowadays, by contrast, we are so accustomed to the notion that sexuality does indeed have a history that we do not often ask ourselves what kind of history sexuality has’.4 In this paper, I wish to first and foremost respond to this important question by turning to the subaltern studies project and post-colonial historiography. My discussion begins with applying subaltern and post-colonial theory to my concerns about the essentialising tendencies of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) historiography. I 1 Howard Chiang (
[email protected]) is the Founding Editor of Critical Studies in History and currently completing his doctoral work in History at Princeton University.