Description
What role does collecting and storing narratives of queer people from Bulgaria have in building archives for a future? What kind of feelings do such archives capture and transmit? This exploratory paper will look into initiatives to create (digital) repositories that can serve as archives for Bulgarian queer culture. It situates this initiative within the predominantly conservative socio-political context of the country and hones into projects focusing on collecting personal stories and histories of queer Bulgarian people. Through those, the paper aims to explore the kinds of pasts, presents, and possible futures people with non-heteronormative sexualities and/or gender identities in Bulgaria share and envision in a context where such futures do not partake in shaping the national imaginary, but are rather seen as a threat. It conceptualises documentation practices as an archive not only of experiences, but also of feelings (Cvetkovich 2003).
Keywords: (digital) archives, Bulgaria, feeling, future-making, queer
