ABSTRACT
In the context of queer theory’s interest in temporality, this chapter considers how gender and sexually non-confirming modernist writers actively imagined and archivally curated their queerness in relation to a future after their own deaths. In doing so, these writers critically and creatively shaped a temporally suspended ontology by anticipating a posthumous future in which their writing might circulate and their queerness achieve its public becoming. Drawing examples from the Bloomsbury group, the chapter acknowledges how status, resources, and an initially individual or coterie focus inform the shape and reach of such queer posthumous becomings. It also asks: as much as these writers needed to imagine “us” as the future receptive readers of their posthumous revelations and queer becoming, how might we also turn to them and the lessons of their resistant temporalities to help us sustain our own future possibilities?
