ABSTRACT
Trans embodiment retains an inherently fictive relationship with the past. Even as an emergent understanding of transgender identity being centuries’ old history continues to take hold, the burden of proof of labeling moments of trans history within the archival record remains contentious. In part, this challenge arises from a chronic inability of institutional and authoritative archives to nuance and alter descriptive and representational practices towards queer embodiment broadly. However, the larger challenge exists within how queer and trans identity detemporalize relationships between trans identity in the present and trans potentialities of the past. To call any identity transgender faces queerly specific challenges. First, the work to include and center identities such as transmasculinity within the archive face hostilities by butch lesbian identities who read such discursive maneuvers as stealing from their community’s own underrepresented history. Second, since myriad archival documents lack literal voice from those whose identities they represent, describing exactly how a moment of trans archival embodiment is trans proves impossible. In response, this chapter through a combination of queer archival theory, trans literary theory, and archival case studies argues for understanding the archive as a site not of nonfictional inconsistencies, but instead one of speculative truth telling. Importantly, understanding that the archive is itself a constructed ideal, the chapter engages archival content that is both text (crossdressing activist newsletters) and image-based (1920s’ silent newsreel drag performances) as well as materials within archival repositories alongside how those same materials get taken up within trans fictional work in online mediated spaces such as TikTok and Tumblr. In doing so, the chapter argues that the idea of trans archival embodiment, while speculative, is wholly historical truth telling.
