2023/08/16 by Zavier Nunn · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #European history and politics #Historical Gender and Feminism Studies #Communism, Protests, Social Movements
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/1468-0424.12721
Abstract 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.