The following is part of a series, Through a Hall Backwards. The series is a pin in a moment, a narrative of ‘what happened’ whilst researching Radclyffe Hall in archives, libraries, online, and conversations with those responsible for the Hall archive. The series blends theory and historical narrative, woven with memoir1. This series is loosely modelled on Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts if the ebook had choose-your-own-adventure hyperlinks; Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, Reprint edition (Graywolf Press, 2015).. The aim is to entangle the process of discovery from what it reveals, developing a narrative of how to come to know Radclyffe Hall.
Neuroqueer Inquiry
This entry is part of a walk-in-process, updated as new ideas and facts come up. Syntax and grammar reflects dyspraxis in action and may not ‘line up’ with a linear narrative.
Crumbs
Peripatetic Prompt:
Connect circumstance and intuition with intention and fact.
Signposts
“queer historicist work has much to offer historians of sexuality, but pathways drawn from literary and cultural criticism require modifi cation or adjustment, because a shared topical interest is not the same as a shared purpose.”
– Laura Doan 20132Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War (University of Chicago Press, 2013), 90.
“the production of knowledge in the register of the neurotypical has always been resisted and queered despite the fact that neurotypical forms of knowledge are rarely addressed or defined as such.”
– Erin Manning, 20183Erin Manning, “Me Lo Dijo Un Pajarito: Neurodiversity, Black Life, and the University as We Know It,” Social Text 36, no. 3 (2018): 2.
“The point is not just to read the webs of knowledge production; the point is to reconfigure what counts as knowledge in the interests of reconstituting the generative forces of embodiment..”
– Donna Haraway, 19944Donna Jeanne Haraway, “A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies,” Configurations 2, no. 1 (1994): 3.
Baker, Michael. Our Three Selves the Life of Radclyffe Hall. William Morrow & Company, 1985.
Dellamora, Richard. Radclyffe Hall: A Life in the Writing. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
Doan, Laura. Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War. University of Chicago Press, 2013.
———. “‘Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself’: The Queer Navigational Systems of Radclyffe Hall.” English Language Notes 45, no. 2 (September 1, 2007): 9–22.
Hall, Radclyffe. Your John: The Love Letters of Radclyffe Hall. NYU Press, 1999.
Maltby-Kemp, Alice. Letter to Jess T. Hooks. “Worcestershire Archive Research – FLINTA [Email],” August 8, 2022.
Nelson, Maggie. The Argonauts. Reprint edition. Graywolf Press, 2015.
Souhami, Diana. The Trials of Radclyffe Hall. Kindle: Open Road Media, 2014.
Traub, V. (2013) ‘The New Unhistoricism in Queer Studies’, PMLA, 128(1), pp. 21–39.
unsent email
22 Oct 2022
I’ve been avoiding writing this as I’ve not found a solution to generating a ‘proof of concept’ ahead of a ‘here is that map’ – I’m not stuck, but the plan discussed at the start of summer, when the concept was difficult to interpret or visualise by others, was a plan I should not have agreed to, in spite of my enthusiasm to meet expectations and remain agreeable.
So, first, where I’m at – I’ve made some in situ recordings (video, photographic, audio, and written), mainly taken during a recce in early July. I’ve dug up the foundational bits of evidence, registers, directories, and censuses (the material record historians cite) that lead into the next round of archive work in Worcester (The Hive), Kew (the National Archives), and King’s Cross (the British Library). I’ve returned to reading more frequently, following a theoretical thread about accessibility, historiography, and archives drawn from a combination of critical history, queer theory, practice-as-research / ‘creative’ research, and from the realm of ‘idocs’ and interactive storytelling. Extensive notes have been kept, some prepared for, and others published on this site.
The work documented and produced is the result of a series of interrelated ‘events’ that circumstantially demanded a queer divergence from course.
This is a message in a bottle, a postcard from the trail (even though I’m writing this from a well-lit garret in a recently vacated building on a London university campus), a multimodal snapshot of the slow and lingering summer of 2022.
Can we meet in the next week or two? It would be helpful for me to speak in person.
Best,
Jess
Citations
- 1. This series is loosely modelled on Maggie Nelson’s Argonauts if the ebook had choose-your-own-adventure hyperlinks; Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts, Reprint edition (Graywolf Press, 2015).
- 2Laura Doan, Disturbing Practices: History, Sexuality, and Women’s Experience of Modern War (University of Chicago Press, 2013), 90.
- 3Erin Manning, “Me Lo Dijo Un Pajarito: Neurodiversity, Black Life, and the University as We Know It,” Social Text 36, no. 3 (2018): 2.
- 4Donna Jeanne Haraway, “A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies,” Configurations 2, no. 1 (1994): 3.