The fabric of our memories

Leather, kinship, and queer material history

Bibliographic Data

ID8090142
AuthorsN Van Doorn (0000-0002-7379-8661, University of Amsterdam, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume9
Issue1
Pages85-98
Publication date2015-12-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMemory Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1750-6980 • E-ISSN: 1750-6999
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1750698015613975
OpenAlexW2383568170
LanguageEN
Citations received10
References cited19

This article examines how the practices of self-preservation and other-directed care within Baltimore’s gay leather community are entangled with the material fabric of leather. I argue that leather forms a mnemonic technology that mediates between intimate experience and collective memory, thereby enabling leathermen to develop affective attachments to both the past and the future of their shared form of life. Ultimately, my aim is to attend to the relation between memory and materiality, asking how the material qualities of leather, as treated animal skin, evoke, store, and shape memories and, vice versa, how such memories imbue leather items with emotional, cultural, and political values

Aesthetics · Art · Cognitive psychology · Collective memory · Kinship · Materiality (auditing · Mnemonic · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sociology · Anthropology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Law · Psychology