‘Historical Queerdar’
Finally, for over a decade I have been asking whether it might be possible to use what I call a ‘historical queerdar’ to locate queer stories of the past.
The written archival record has so frequently erased queer stories that alternate modes of retrieval need to be tried out. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a ‘gaydar’ as "an ability, attributed esp. to homosexual people… to identify a (fellow) homosexual person by intuition or by interpreting subtle signals conveyed by appearance or behaviour".
Though legal provisions have been put in place to protect queer people in Britain today, attitudes have been slower to change and queer people continue to be forced to behave differently. As a result, there remains an embodied knowledge within the queer community.
To locate queer histories, I propose that we need to study how queer people signal their identities to one another today in both queer and non-queer spaces. We might also investigate how, when and where queer people who are in heteronormative relationships show their identities.
I believe that analysis of these unspoken languages that continue to be used may help us to identify new queer histories.
Written by David Coates, Assistant Professor, Theatre and Performance Studies, School of Creative Arts, Performance and Visual Cultures at The University of Warwick