Against anticipation, or, camp reading as reparative to the trans feminine past

A microhistory in Nazi‐Era Vienna

Bibliographic Data

ID12226372
AuthorsZavier Nunn (0000-0003-2150-4761, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies Department Duke University (USA), corresponding author)
Year2023
Volume36
Issue1
Pages191-207
Publication date2023-08-16
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueGender & History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0953-5233 • E-ISSN: 1468-0424
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/1468-0424.12721
OpenAlexW4385953293
LanguageEN
Citations received4

Whether trans people – especially trans women – were persecuted by the Nazi regime remains a contested yet under‐researched topic. But the wider political backdrop (including the culture wars and Holocaust memorialisation practices) steers this historical question with a monolithic value: victimisation. This hyper‐focus on victimisation is underpinned by a ‘paranoia’ that pre‐empts tragic historical narratives. Trans histories that do not neatly map onto tragic narration are therefore deemed unthinkable and remain absent from the nascent literature. In a move against paranoid anticipation, this article puts forward an argument for a ‘Camp reading’ practice that embraces ‘insincere’ and ironic material to recalibrate which trans stories are deigned to be given a history. The microhistory of Bella P. in Nazi‐era Vienna acts as a case study in divesting from the politics of victimhood, that challenges the historian's anticipatory impulses, offering the trans feminine past under National Socialism a ‘reparative’ entry into the historical canon on its own terms

Aesthetics · Art · Literature · Microhistory · Narrative · Nazism · Paranoia · Poison control · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Reading (process · Value (mathematics · Victimisation · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · European history and politics · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Medicine · Psychology

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