Thesis Supervisor: Hypatia Vourloumis

Thesis: Transcribbling: Queer Acts of Archival Disruption

July 2020

Abstract

Transcribbling is the disruption of standardized archival practices through queer acts of re-sistance, as well as a method of writing that is attuned to the complexities of forming an ac-tivist archive. The content of each chapter in this thesis focuses on insurrectionary minoritari-an performances, gestures and sounds that communicate through a language of refusal, dis-rupting procedures of power through modes of imperceptibility and opacity. These transcrib-bles are always in excess of any descriptive language, operating from the margins and yet, always communicable to those within the currents of dispossession. The archives of history have been constructed by white supremacist forces that mediate what materials reside in the archive and how these materials, themselves, are structured vis-a-vis standardized method-ologies of description, inscription, and transcription. Transcribbling combats the violent fixi-ty and tactics of erasure that attempt to silence and subjugate queers and people of colors into legibility and coherence. Transcribbling is a practice of writing that attempts to write up the influx of gestural excess, affective intensities, and historical sounds that have always existed in-spite-of and otherwise, disrupting, envisioning and actively participating in forming a politic that resounds in difference across time and space. 

Author: Zachary Schoenhut