ABSTRACT
If queer studies denaturalized the contemporary sexual subject in crossing time, casting queer historical studies as a comparatist practice allowed to understand this subject, including the queer scholar him- or herself, as an object of comparison as well. In addition, a significant body of recent work grouped under the rubric of “queer temporalities” has taught that sequence, linear narrative, narratives of progress or development – that is, the conventional if not dominant modes of history writing as well as the gay-history-as-coming-out-narrative model – have a certain sexuality, one that is hetero- and repronormative. “Inversion” is a term with its own queer possibilities. It suggests not only that sexuality has a history but also that history might “have” a sexuality, might itself be thought of as being sexual, or that sexuality must be central to the writing of history rather than a peripheral concern.
