Marijke Huisman, Queer geschiedenis van Nederland: De strijd om een eigen verleden

Abstract

How does one write a history of queerness in the Netherlands, or, to the extent that this is not the same thing, a queer history of the Netherlands? How to do justice to centuries of historical experiences, and how to decide if people were indeed “queer” in the modern sense of this word – not just as a sexual orientation, but also as a position to challenge and contest norms? These were some of the questions Utrecht-based historian Marijke Huisman wrestled with when she was asked if she could write such a book. She found answers when looking at memory activism after 1900. In the past hundred years or so, activists became aware of the need to build out a cultural archive of predecessors and influences to show there had always been queers. Queer geschiedenis van Nederland [Queer History of the Netherlands] is therefore not a book that traces who might or might not have been queer in the past; rather, Huisman wants to account for the “long tradition of working on an ‘own’ history and at the same time show the continuous debate about that history”. “Own,” in this context, means queer memory activists’ search for a history of people like themselves, as well as a history written by queers rather than just about them. Due to a lack of official records, life writing is an essential source for this type of history-writing.