Construction and Destruction of Trans Identity in the Archive: Through Allan Sekula’s Framework of Reading an Archive

In Allan Sekula’s 1983 essay “Photography Between Labor and Capital” he puts forth the imperative that one must read the archive ‘against the grain’ (borrowing language from Walter Benjamin’s final essay), saying, “Neither the contents, nor the forms, nor the many receptions and interpretations of the archive of human achievements can be assumed to be innocent... The archive has to be read from below, from a position of solidarity with those displaced, deformed, silenced, or made invisible by the machineries of profit and progress” (Sekula, 1983, p. 22). This essay takes this directive and applies it specifically to looking at how trans identity is created, maintained, and destroyed through archival practices and information systems as a whole.

This paper uses research from a variety of sources, synthesizing ‘high’ academic theory with research from ‘low culture’ and underground settings. It deals with topics which are rarely discussed within archival spheres, specifically prioritizing a trans-materialist perspective, which is virtually unheard of within LIS, where transness is seen as an identity first and foremost.