In a Discord call with my friend about finding a personal doctor, I mentioned that the primary and only reason I had searched for one recently was so I could start taking estrogen. I had already come out to her, but she did not know I had begun hormone replacement therapy. In surprise to the offhand comment, she exclaimed, “Oh, you’re transitioning!” I was immediately irked, but was saved from further explanation by another person joining the group chat. The word “transition” felt wrong somehow. My whole life has been grappling with an intense sense of discomfort; I reject the notion of a process that had a fixed starting point.
Emily Drabinski, in “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction,” that a potential queer solution to the inherent biases of library classification and cataloging is by increasing points of reference. Through technological approaches, search interfaces can show related and broader terms, as well as allowing users to tag and map subject headings. Users can see themselves better in these systems while also being aware of the discursive nature of cataloging and classification.[1] In similar ways, documents and artifacts in colonial archives can be reclaimed by adding points of provenance, as seen in Jeannette Allis Bastian’s article “Whispers in the Archives: Finding the Voices of the Colonized in the Records of the Colonizer.” Conceptual provenance, as conceived by Terry Cook, shifts provenance away from the physical location of creation to the population the documents describe. [2] It is through the addition of contextual points that deeper understanding of materials, both its content and form, can be understood.
“It is not a problem of finally determining the correct word that will describe myself; any such decision simply inaugurates the play of resistance all over again,” writes Drabinski.[3] In the past year and a half, both in terms of my gender identity and my professional path, I have opted out of classifying myself to the best extent possible. The UCLA MLIS program specializations were too limiting, so I refused to stick to a pathway. I introduced myself to classes with they/them pronouns, but if anyone used something different, I would not correct them. Detachment gives perspective, but that is just a first step. Drabinski states that discursive interventions reveal the fantasies of objective structures and assumptions of exclusivity, after which you can then close off or open up possibilities.[4] Pretending something can be nothing is insufficient: books must be catalogued, documents must be appraised for provenance, I need to find a job and mark the appropriate boxes on job applications with my sexual identity.
Pretending something is one thing is also insufficient. Sites of reference and personal identity will inevitably be challenged. “Central to queer claims about structures of identity is this idea that such structures are always already in motion, contingent, and subject to change.”[5] Even in identifying what I am not, I remain uncertain of what I am. I am not a man; I have not taken any courses in the rare book’s pathway. I don’t know yet if I want to use she/her pronouns too, maybe one day I could work in special collections. There is also contestation beyond myself in time. Friends and siblings use the wrong pronouns sometimes, as does my passport and drivers license misgender me. And yet, while I hope these inconsistencies and violences are resolved, I don’t want to ignore or blot them out of history. “It is easier to imagine points of entry into critically teaching classification and controlled vocabularies if offensive subject divisions and subject language remain uncorrected.”[6] The Library of Congress once classified works on homosexuality under “sexual deviations.” That does not come as a surprise to me, a tranny and a faggot.
While imagining systems that allow for richer nuance in the addition of points of refence, a question needs to be answered. When do we stop? Documents and items can only be physically stored in one location. Adding too many tags to items will decrease search accuracy. In the end, materials will need to be more one thing than the other for it to be useful in a catalogue setting. The second solution proposed by Drabinski might counter this inevitability. Library professionals can be upfront about the biased nature of classification and cataloging with users, allowing for transparency and a site for dialogue.[7] If the nature of classification and cataloging is inherently mediated, then allowing for more people to understand that site is the next step in ensuring a more holistic approach to the materials in circulation.
[1]Emily Drabinski, “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction,” Library Quarterly, vol. 83, no. 2. (2013): 106.
[2]Allis Jeanette Bastian, “Whispers in the Archives: Finding the Voices of the Colonized in the Records of the Colonizer,” in Political Pressure and the Archival Record, ed. Margaret Procter, Michael Cook, and Caroline Williams, (Society of Amer Archivists, 2005), 25-34.
[3] Drabinski, “Queering the Catalog: Queer Theory and the Politics of Correction,” 103
[4] Drabinski, 104
[5] Drabinski, 95
[6] Drabinski, 108
[7] Drabinski, 107 - 108
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