Heritage, tourism, and lesbian & queer identification: Anne Lister and 21st century ‘Lister sisters’
This project examines the interaction of travel, sexuality and gender in the writings of the early 19th century diarist, Anne Lister, and explores how and why Lister has captured the imagination of 21st century queer communities, inspiring many of their members to read her work and retrace her journeys.
Queer pilgrimage is a journey made by an individual or a group to a location, permanent or transitory, which bears relevance to the lives, cultures, and politics of queer people. It is undertaken for the pilgrim/s to feel an affinity with the space itself through emotional and/or physical proximity. Since Gentleman Jack first aired in 2019, acts of queer pilgrimage have increased substantially to key sites associated with Lister, including to Shibden Hall (her ancestral home), Halifax, York, and beyond. In this article I draw upon two forms of queer pilgrimage in relation to Anne Lister. The first is this substantial increase in tourism and attraction to sites associated with Lister. The second is the queer pilgrimage Lister herself undertook in 1822 to the Ladies of Llangollen at their home, Plas Newydd.In drawing out these two comparatively, I propose that historical and contemporary forms of queer pilgrimage have more in common than may initially be apparent, namely a commonality between the queer pilgrims of the 19th and 21st centuries around a desire for community.
Recent French films have sparked discussion about how we under-stand the AIDS crisis and how that historical understanding informs present-day views of HIV/AIDS in France and further afield. An example of this, Robin Campillo’s period piece, 120 Battements par minute (2017), explicitly depicts ‘la petite mort’ and the connection between orgasm and demise through the experiences of Parisian ACT UP members during the height of the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. The following article argues that the three sex scenes in 120 BPM are pivotal points in the narrative which quite literally raise the dead, connecting the characters to lost lovers, members of their community and their past selves. Through this, I analyse how these scenes interact with the film’s re-enactment scenes of protest actions in the 1990s, through their choreography, dialogue, duration, and the images of sexual acts themselves. To do this, I identify how the film troubles and recon-structs ideas of death in AIDS cinema through the recognition of the HIV+ individual as one who will not be desexualised by the virus, even if they are dying. This article will scrutinise and query the relationship between the sex scene, mortality, and memory in 120 BPM.
RÉSUMÉ
Récemment, le cinéma français a suscité des débats autour de notre compréhension de la crise du SIDA, en particulier comment cette vision historique éclaire notre point de vue actuel sur le VIH et le SIDA en France mais aussi à l’étranger. Un exemple de cette production cinématique est le film d’époque de Robin Campillo, 120 Battements par minute (2017), qui représente ‘la petite mort’ et la connexion entre l’orgasme et la mort, en regardant les expériences des mem-bres parisiens du groupe « ACT UP » au sommet de la crise du SIDA au début des années 1990. L’article qui suit affirme que les trois scènes de sexe dans 120 BPM sont des points clés dans l’histoire qui ressus-citent littéralement les morts, en liant les personnages aux amours perdus, aux membres de leur communauté, et aux anciennes ver-sions d’eux-mêmes. En avançant cette thèse, j’analyse les interactions de ces scènes-ci et leur chorégraphie, dialogue, durée, ainsi que leur représentation des actes, avec les scènes de manifestation qui ten-tent de recréer certaines manifestations des années 1990. J’analyse la manière dont le film dérange et reconstruit les idées de mort dans le cinéma de la crise du SIDA par la reconnaissance de l’individu séropositif en tant que quelqu’un qui ne sera pas désexualisé par le virus, malgré le fait qu’il est mourant. Cet article examinera et inter-rogera les liens entre le scène de sexe, la mortalité, et le souvenir dans 120 BPM.
