Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures

Ann Cvetkovich,

Michele Ainabarale (Editor)

4.16 · Rating details · 483 ratings · 28 reviews

In this bold new work of cultural criticism, Ann Cvetkovich develops a queer approach to trauma. She argues for the importance of recognizing---and archiving---accounts of trauma that belong as much to the ordinary and everyday as to the domain of catastrophe. Cvetkovich contends that the field of trauma studies, limited by too strict a division between the public and the ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 355 pages

Published March 14th 2003 by Duke University Press Books (first published 2003)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about An Archive of Feelings, please sign up.

Be the first to ask a question about An Archive of Feelings

Lists with This Book

Touching Feeling by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

The Cultural Politics of Emotion by Sara Ahmed

An Archive of Feelings by Ann Cvetkovich

Affect Theory

29 books — 14 voters

Gender, Humiliation, and Global Security by Evelin Lindner

Flirting with Danger by Lynn M. Phillips

Best Books on Trauma and Gender

13 books — 3 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.16 ·

Rating details

· 483 ratings · 28 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures

Nov 20, 2013 TJ rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction, lez

An Archive of Feelings opens with gushing praise for Le Tigre/Kathleen Hanna and Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which meant that I was wondering from page one if I could take seriously a work about trauma that is brazenly uncritical of sites of significant transmisogynistic trauma such as MichFest. Especially when it casts those sites as arenas where some rituals of healing for (a certain kind of) lesbian trauma survivor can occur. Cvetkovich describes a scene at trans woman exclusionary MichF An Archive of Feelings opens with gushing praise for Le Tigre/Kathleen Hanna and Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, which meant that I was wondering from page one if I could take seriously a work about trauma that is brazenly uncritical of sites of significant transmisogynistic trauma such as MichFest. Especially when it casts those sites as arenas where some rituals of healing for (a certain kind of) lesbian trauma survivor can occur. Cvetkovich describes a scene at trans woman exclusionary MichFest in which audience members mosh gleefully while Lynn Breedlove, wearing a dildo, 'castrates' herself on stage. I felt nauseous reading Cvetkovich's insistence that this performance held healing power for survivors of sexual trauma. It's hard for me to read the performance of 'mock castration' in a trans woman exclusionary space as anything other than a violent show of transmisogyny. Cvetkovich even included photos for us, and I felt extra, extra nauseous reading the caption to one of them: 'Let's play gang castrate.' This work is an archive, sure, but a limited one, and one that excludes many lesbians.

Aside from the transmisogyny, I was consistently underwhelmed by her analysis. She often seemed to be offering little more than a synopsis of the texts and films included in the work, and maybe that was just the book performing the work of the archive, but in any case it wasn't the most engaging reading. I just wanted more! Instead she'd move on from a piece of analysis just as I was ready to like, hear what she really had to offer me from it. In amassing an archive, here, something was lost, and I don't know if it necessarily had to be that way.

An Archive of Feelings is at its best with its oral history, which is a little funny given Cvetkovich's ambivalence toward oral history itself. But the project of documenting the lives of lesbians involved with ACT UP and their contributions during the crisis years of AIDS is so important. I still wish she'd done better, but I have to credit her some for having done it at all. It was clearly a failing that she only interviewed one woman of color, and no lesbians of color, and it left a sour taste in my mouth that she tried to excuse herself for this by highlighting that she interviewed some Jewish women and some women from working class backgrounds. She wrote that she thought "some of the pitfalls of ethnographic research could be avoided by sticking close to home [Manhattan] and interviewing people like me," but she doesn't go on to explain what these 'pitfalls' are, and it feels like a weird excuse to not even try to include voices of people who aren't 'like her' in a way that is non-tokenizing and as true to their experiences as they possibly can be, filtered through her ethnographic standpoint. I mean, throwing your hands up and saying 'I can't!' because you're a white researcher and thus excluding lesbians of color from your oral history project is just as much of a 'pitfall' as mishandling their histories. Right? She frames interviewing Marina Alvarez as a 'risk,' which is gross, and then uses Alvarez's one interview to claim that "Alvarez debunked any presumption that ACT UP was exclusionary by enthusiastically claiming a sense of kinship." Sounds like you're making a big claim out of one WOC's experience, Cvetkovich. I'm sure she would have found testimonies to the counter if she'd looked a little harder for them, but I have a feeling she didn't want to find them.
There was still a lot that was fascinating about the oral histories, as limited as they were. I especially liked that she didn't see interpersonal relations and dynamics as historically insignificant, and really loved reading about romantic relationships formed between ACT UP's gay men and lesbian women. The last chapter, which dealt most directly with archives, was one of the stronger chapters, too. It was a nice mini-history of gay and lesbian archives, especially the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and her writing about the importance of ephemera for gay and lesbian archives was great.

I don't even know how to tackle the epilogue, it was a bit of a mess and nicely (awfully) bookended the transmisogyny in the introduction. I mean, the whole thing is a great example of that tendency in lesbian communities to ""accept"" trans men in that fucked up, backwards way they do -- at least recognizing their existence and humanity. Like, even if Cvetkovich was sorta subtly 'claiming' Brandon Teena as a lesbian, she was at least recognizing the trauma of his death. That is much more than can be said of her position of absolute silence towards the existence of trans women. In context, her silence becomes sinister.
...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Jan 02, 2013 Liz rated it liked it

Shelves: to-read-2014

I wanted to read this on the strength of the article that later formed the chapter "in the archive of lesbian feelings", which deals explicitly with grassroots queer archives and the differences between grassroots and institutional archives. in this chapter, Cvetkovich claims that queer archives -- considered in the broadest sense as queer individuals' or communities' attachments to objects/artefacts -- are often formed of attachments to seemingly arbitrary or even homophobic things -- like old I wanted to read this on the strength of the article that later formed the chapter "in the archive of lesbian feelings", which deals explicitly with grassroots queer archives and the differences between grassroots and institutional archives. in this chapter, Cvetkovich claims that queer archives -- considered in the broadest sense as queer individuals' or communities' attachments to objects/artefacts -- are often formed of attachments to seemingly arbitrary or even homophobic things -- like old pulp novels with queer villains. that is, within a homophobic society, where overt queer representation might surface only rarely, the death of the author and the primacy of the reader's interpretation becomes a necessary assumption for psychic survival. that's why all your gay friends insist that louis and harry are totally doing it. what does it mean to preserve queer history when the most important artefacts for queer people -- especially queer women -- often aren't overtly queer in any way? what's the connection between this arbitrariness and the arbitrariness of traumatic associations like PTSD triggers? affective attachment in general? queerness is about feelings. how do you create an archive of feelings? cool question.

I was also really into the chapter on butch/femme identities and sexual practices, particularly the discussion of butch impermeability/imperturbability in Stone Butch Blues as a model of dealing with trauma that doesn't mandate that you "let it all out". I've been thinking a lot lately about how feminist activists and theorists can honour and centre trauma survivors and survival strategies without minimising trauma and violence, casting survivors as fundamentally broken, or, crucially, demanding complete openness to public scrutiny of traumatic experiences, and this was a helpful way to begin thinking about this.

So aspects of this book kind of blew my mind. My major criticism is of the complete absence of trans women. Like, this is a book that's very much about lesbian communities and the lesbian public sphere, and that deals extensively with the question of gatekeeping in lesbian communities, not to mention talking about the fucking Michigan Womyn's Music Festival (notorious for its explicit refusal of entry rights to trans women) in glowing terms. Not every book has to address everything, but in the context of longrunning struggles over the place of trans women in lesbian communities, this absence takes on the character of deliberate erasure. ...more

flag 7 likes · Like · see review

Feb 06, 2013 LF rated it it was amazing

Absolutely amazing. I had read selected chapters from this before and was impressed, but reading the entire book just solidifies my initial reaction. Cvetkovich is a genius, and her ideas have influenced the way I work with trauma and will influence my future scholarship for sure.

flag 6 likes · Like · see review

Jul 22, 2011 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cultural-studies, gender-and-wost, teaching

This is really an excellent book, and very teach-able. It, or individual chapters from it could be used in courses on on Holocaust or trauma studies, affect theory, psychoanalytic reading of popular culture, as well as GLBTQ, transnational culture, social movement history, /or gender pop culture more generally. Cvetkovich accessibly presents complicated and nuanced readings of a variety of texts and connects these readings to the way they are part of public cultures of feeling that we all live ...more

flag 3 likes · Like · see review

May 18, 2010 Michael rated it it was amazing

Shelves: social-theory-comps

In An Archive of Feeling (2003), Ann Cvetkovich explores trauma through an archive of lesbian artifacts and interviews with lesbians. She is particularly "interested in how these lesbian sites give rise to different ways of thinking about trauma and in particular to a sense of trauma as connected to the textures of everyday experience" (3-4). For Cvetkovich, trauma isn't a single one-time event (such as September 11), but rather part of lived experience. Additionally, part of her goal is to unde In An Archive of Feeling (2003), Ann Cvetkovich explores trauma through an archive of lesbian artifacts and interviews with lesbians. She is particularly "interested in how these lesbian sites give rise to different ways of thinking about trauma and in particular to a sense of trauma as connected to the textures of everyday experience" (3-4). For Cvetkovich, trauma isn't a single one-time event (such as September 11), but rather part of lived experience. Additionally, part of her goal is to understand trauma as something that can be foundational for public cultures, or "for creating counterpublic spheres rather than evacuating them" (15). Rather than psychologizing or medicalizing trauma, Cvetkovich sees trauma "as a social and cultural discourse that emerges in response to the demands of grappling with the psychic consequences of historical events" (18). Part of this includes, importantly, understanding trauma as not solely a private issue, but rather something that is part of public culture (here, queering the public/private distinction) (32).

Chapter 2 discusses butch-femme writings that "[trouble:] the ease with which negative assumptions about penetration ground a similarly negative sense of trauma that seems to go without saying" (52). Femmes, Cvetkovich argues, are not passive recipients of penetration from their butch partners, but rather active; she notes the impoverished language we have for sexuality and power that leads us to believe there is simply an active and a passive partner (59). Through public writings, butch-femme cultures have created ways of coping with trauma that isn't supported by dominant culture (81-82). Part of Cvetkovich's project is to question the rather straightforward ways in which standard therapeutic and political responses to trauma have attempted to cure trauma: "no simple prescription . . . can heal it" (117). Chapter 4 explores this in a transnational context, arguing that queering our understanding of trauma allows us to understand that the trauma of immigration does not have to "be 'healed' by a return to the 'natural' nation of origin or assimilation into a new one" (121). Rather, trauma can be a resource for creating new cultures (122).

Chapters 5 and 6 discuss her interviews with lesbians who have worked with AIDS activism. She draws on Laura Brown's work, which describes "insidious trauma" as "the ways in which punctual events, such as rape and sexual abuse, are linked to more pervasive and everyday experiences of sexism" (163). Chapter 7 discusses gay and lesbian archives as archives of affect and emotion.

Cvetkovich closes in her epilogue with some broader questions, including asking "Whose feelings count?" in national culture (278). Rather than a liberal, inclusive model that asks that lesbian feelings be included equally with others in national discourse, she in a way asks how feelings count. For example, she'd like to see responses to September 11 that don't respond by trying to heal trauma with dichotomies (us vs. them) and patriotism, but rather transnational responses. ...more

flag 2 likes · Like · see review

Sep 18, 2020 Sofia Sears rated it it was amazing

<3 the queer wannabe gender studies / lit scholar’s bible

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 19, 2013 Eve rated it it was amazing

an important look at trauma from a queer/lesbian perspective. it was very affirming to the ways in which trauma has positive effects within personal and cultural contexts, as well as the negative and the neutral. some of the oral history stuff was really fascinating, and told stories rarely heard even in queer contexts. i had not considered the feelings created by the trauma of AIDs with regards carers and particularly queer/lesbian carers, and the consequent effect on the community's trauma nar ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 08, 2016 Madeleine rated it really liked it

Shelves: theory, affect-e-m-o-tion, queer

cvetkovich's text took a while to get started, but after sifting through the first few chapters, it really blew me away. while she begins with a rather repetitive framework, it also helps make the text accessible to those who may have less exposure. i loved several of the chapters in this book though, particularly cvetkovich's really singular analysis of butch-femme relationships in chapter 2, which argues for a necessary convergence of trauma and desire, debasing notions of active/passive binar ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 06, 2007 Laura rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: academics, queer theory junkies, trauma survivors, le tigre fans

Shelves: non-fiction

I decided to check this book out, after reading about how an article by Cvetkovich helped to inspire Le Tigre to write the song "Keep On Living".

This book deals with the many intersections between the queer community and the current discussions in trauma theory. It especially delves into issues with "confessing" versus "witnessing", and how the queer community's experiences with coming out create a more positive model for trauma survivor's to tell their stories and heal, contrasted with past mo ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 11, 2008 Anjali rated it really liked it

In parts I think this book is fantastic, gorgeous, and amazingly done... then at times I get frustrated and think there are so many fissures and incomplete sentences.

I guess my main issues would be (1) the use of trauma as an analytic category without a clear context for how she is talking about power... namely, who has more access to trauma? and correspondingly (2) do we try to then describe the shape of oppression through the lens of trauma-- doesn't this pathologize race, gender, sexual, clas ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Mar 08, 2017 Ai Miller rated it it was amazing

Shelves: suicide-project, queer-theory, owned-books

An incredibly engrossing, quick read--although it's ~300 pages, I finished it in less than a day. Highlights for me included the chapter on butch-femme touch and trauma, and the oral histories of lesbian AIDS activists. Cvetkovich does an incredible broad sweep of a number of lesbian public cultures and readings of things that are really valuable for establishing a framework of how trauma studies might interact with other fields to be truly interdisciplinary. For a book with a somewhat imposing ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Nov 21, 2014 Max rated it really liked it

Shelves: nonfiction, lgbtqia

I'm frustrated with the effusive praise Cvetkovich repeatedly gives Michfest - she even devotes an entire section to the "controversies" of Michfest without once mentioning that it excludes trans women, which I wouldn't have thought would even be possible - and I'm also a bit uncomfortable with the way she talks about Brandon Teena in the epilogue. So, on the whole, not the most trans-friendly book, but I'm still giving it four stars because it was a really good, really cathartic read. A lot of ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 24, 2008 Ezra rated it really liked it

ok, at first reading I was excited about this book but wished it was less academic language. now I'm working on this project that is about queer archives and yiddish archives and this book is SO HELPFUL and relevant so yay I'm so glad this book exists! ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Oct 08, 2013 Kate rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: grassroots archivists, counterprotestors

Recommended to Kate by: Melanie

Shelves: ischool

"To deny sickness and death is to deny the reality of the present."

"Every life is worthy of preservation." ...more

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jan 20, 2008 Sara rated it it was amazing

This book has some categorical problems. HOWEVER, it is really excellent (and innovative) with regard to its treatment of trauma and archives. Both very personally and academically impactful.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 26, 2011 Jessica rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2011, feminisms, mysaturnreturns, nonfiction, sociological

love all the parts about the Lesbian Herstory Archives

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Feb 25, 2016 ND rated it really liked it

brilliant!

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Jun 06, 2014 homoness rated it it was ok

Shelves: theory, partially-read, english, gender-sex, post-structuralism

transphobic in content, underachieving in theoretical ambition.

flag 1 like · Like · see review

Dec 28, 2018 amy rated it really liked it

The frame story as I understand it is interpreting trauma as generating an enormous range of affects as well as archives that capture, represent, run on, and themselves continually (re)produce affects. Cvetkovich aims to reshape at least two definitons. 1) Trauma is not only clinical, or defined by its global or national scale, but also part of everyday experience. 2) Moving away from thinking about archives as strictly institutional or a matter of "general logic" (bye, Derrida) and towards a de ...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 02, 2020 i. rated it really liked it

Shelves: academia, affect-theory, feminist-thought, sex-and-sexuality, theory, methods, archival, queer-studies

Cvetkovich seeks to explore trauma, and in doing so, she approaches a new mode of archive, arguing that, “…trauma challenges common understandings of what constitutes an archive…[it] puts pressure on conventional forms of documentation, representation, and commemoration, giving rise to new genres of expression” (7). Trauma, through affect, produces public culture or ways of life/lived experiences that are “frequently inadequate to the task of documentation” (9); thus, an archive of feelings, “…i ...more

flag Like · see review

Jul 06, 2020 Shannon Hanna rated it really liked it

This is a book I did not read from front to back. I preferred skipping around and focusing on a few different chapters. I used this book as a part of my research for my senior thesis on Queer Archiving. Now that I am done with the thesis I would definitely go back to this book and read it again.

flag Like · see review

May 06, 2018 Paul rated it it was amazing

Shelves: lgbtq

This is a book with far broader appeal than any short summary could convey. When I was investigating trauma theory in connection with my graduate thesis on trauma in the 19th Century, I discovered Cvetkovich wrote a book on this topic. I had a hard time finding a library copy and it was too expensive to buy, so I bought this instead. I knew nothing about this author or this text.

I felt an instant affinity for this book. Cvetkovich's thesis is that gay and particularly lesbian culture commemorat ...more

flag Like · see review

Jan 25, 2014 Justin Abraham rated it really liked it

Shelves: queer, read-parts, ma, non-fiction, illness-death-grief, art-lit-history

A critique of Judith Herman's idea that S/M expresses past traumas. Encourages greater intention to sexual experimentation as a way through trauma.
Lesbian public culture approaching trauma in performance art, memoirs, punk bands instead of medicalized narratives.
Discusses Berlant's "intimate public sphere" in which citizens of the U.S. count as citizens because they have suffered from a trauma of the state.
...more

flag Like · see review

Mar 12, 2019 Isabel J rated it liked it

Shelves: ethics, gender-race-sexuality, theory-whatever-that-means, research

I really appreciate Cvetkovich's exploration of the ways trauma is differently experienced.

I'm no expert in the field, but I have been disappointed by other critics who insist on systematic, axiomatically reductive accounts of trauma and mourning.

Props, dude. ...more

flag Like · see review

Feb 18, 2008 Greta rated it liked it

Shelves: weird-psychological-theory, incest-classics

I might be the only person on earth who thinks that this book fell way to short of what could have been a really productive mark. Interesting, just not as meaty as it should be. Maybe a better point of departure than a destination.

flag Like · see review

May 10, 2008 emi k is currently reading it

Recommends it for: Page Mcbeeeeeeeee

i'm in LOVE with this book so far.

...more

flag Like · see review

Jun 19, 2007 kt rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: scholars, lesbians, queers

what i learned from this book: feelings are political, and important to collective memory.

flag Like · see review

Feb 05, 2008 Courtney rated it really liked it

just starting to read this book, and it is powerful. ann cvetkovich is a smarty-pants and i am ready to learn!

flag Like · see review

Ayaz1 rated it it was amazing
Sep 24, 2019

emily rated it it was amazing
Jul 20, 2008

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend It | Stats | Recent Status Updates

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

GLBT > Queer

40 users

Nonfiction

33 users

LGBT

25 users

Philosophy > Theory

19 users

Feminism

18 users

Gender

8 users

Culture > Cultural Studies

8 users

Academic

8 users

Sexuality

8 users

GLBT > Lesbian

7 users

See top shelves…

About Ann Cvetkovich

Ann Cvetkovich

44 followers

Ann Cvetkovich is Ellen C. Garwood Centennial Professor of English and Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. She is the author of Depression: A Public Feeling, An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures, and Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism; a coeditor of Political Emotions; and a former editor of ...more