Bodily Histories and Memories
Felt Notes
ID: Members of the Monsoon 2024 TDR—Namitha, Eyeshaan, KP, Anu, Shinjini, Ruhani, and c’est moi (online lab log)—at T. Jayashree’s studio, huddled together as we make sense of queer and trans+ data in the context of archives and the QAMRA project. Image courtesy of Kush Patel.
October marked the conclusion of my three-week seminar intensive on Archival Activism and the beginning of a five-week transdisciplinary research (TDR) cycle on Queer- and Trans-Feminist DH and Critical Making, in short, a continuity of scholarly discourses on archives and storytelling.
My very first assignment of TDR on the very first day of the week, however, was rest. I wanted to give myself and student participants a day (and an extended weekend) to rest, pause, and prepare ourselves for this transition, given the extremely involved and contiguous ways in which my courses—and the Master of Arts curriculum at large—come into being in a given semester. By assigning rest, I also wanted to welcome both new and continuing lab members—Anu, Eyeshaan, Krishnapriya, Namitha Moses, Ruhani Chatterjee, and Shinjini Asthana—to this space and community, and to begin modeling for us how the pedagogy of the Just Futures Co-lab is about:
orienting ourselves toward,
building skills in, and
practicing: slow research,
where slowness is an epistemological and experiential frame—and about presence and being present with the materials under study; about immersing ourselves in these materials; about being in dialogue with these materials; about honoring voice and feelings connected to these materials; about understanding that our questions will emerge from this situated, embodied, and relational work; about saying no to rushing through this process; about refusing the neoliberal logics of research productivity; and about adding criticality to making.
I wrote:
“What is the first assignment? We will begin with, and assign our collective selves, rest. It’s been a continuously running semester for all of us, and with rest, we will take our discussions and work on research slowly; disrupt normative modes and expectations of creative and scholarly production; open ourselves to building a relationship with research and theory-building that feels socially and academically significant—and most importantly, that stems from and returns to the body, our bodies.” [1]
And returning to our bodies is indeed how we have concluded each day and each week of this ongoing TDR cycle; and it is this approach to centering the body in and with the digital that has also been a recurring way in which I’ve brought the lab’s two project spaces—Queer Futurities and Futures with the “Peripheries”—together in conversation with each other, especially in the context of researching the constitution of queer and trans+ born-digital archive; and it was also this question of the body—each of our bodies—that enabled us to collectively write a set of mutually resonant space and community guidelines that also remain one of the ever so precious guiding lights of this semester’s lab work; and it is this process of knowing with the body—bodies that toil with, imagine, feel, document, and memorialize related bodies—that has also extended my relationship-building work with T. Jayashree (founding member of the QAMRA Project) into co-developing a set of conceptual and practical skills of archiving.
As I approach the culmination of this semester’s TDR and browse through our extensive lab log covering four thematic weeks—Orientations; Inquiry (In)formation; Data and Archives Tent; and Sandbox Set-Up and Review—I am filled with gratitude for the immense ways in which each of the lab members have practiced “radical vulnerability” or what I shared in Week 1, “to build mutual trust and connection, including affective connections with the materials under study,” so that our engagements with data, digital and online spaces, and with digital archival construction itself remain ever so vigilant of any and all attempts that assert control over our bodily histories and memories.
Onward!
Notes
[1] “Participant Copy: Transdisciplinary Research Log,” The Just Futures Co-lab (Monsoon 2024), 2.
Opportunities
+ Jobs: Wipro Story Project is seeking assistantship for the digitization and documentation of Wipro Archives. Read about the position description and responsibilities here and send an email to spandana [dot'] bhowmik [at] Wipro [dot] com with ‘Project Assistant (Digitization) for the Wipro Story Project’ in the subject line.
+ Jobs: Archival Project Assistant–QAMRA Archival Project, NLSIU, Bengaluru (Deadline: November 5, 2024)
+ Jobs: A Digital Accessibility Job Board (for folx working on assistive technologies) (Global).
+ Event: Pride Rock and LGBTQ+ Anthems by AVNV (November 16, Indiranagar Social, Bengaluru): Ticket sales are on!
+ Call for Submissions: Little Puss Press (original manuscripts of fiction and non-fiction, including works-in-progress. The Press is also considering reprint proposals of literary/historical works of significance by transgender authors (Deadline: Ongoing)
About
Felt Notes are monthly dispatches about the work of the Just Futures Co-lab, and the co-labouring worlds of research and teaching in art, design, and the digital humanities that it scaffolds, furthers, and amplifies. The letter writing translates the ever so negotiated nature of this space at Srishti Manipal Institute and the discourse and scholarship on equity and justice I produce with students and wider academic and non-academic community members through critical pedagogy; archival and database constructions; interactive digital storytelling; and inquiries into queer-feminist media technologies and infrastructures.
I hope reading this letter and its upcoming segments are a meaningful experience for you. If you aren’t subscribed yet, you may do so here. If you are already subscribed, I would love for you to share the link with friends and trusted networks as we make sense of our relationships to technology as well as our relationships to each other via technology. If you would like to write or co-write a letter in the future or share any announcements, please feel free to get in touch with me, and whilst you’re here, please also check out the Felt Notes Archive.
Kush Patel