To touch a past that burns: the speculative rehearsals of feminist historiography

Beeston, Alix ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6356-7931 2027. To touch a past that burns: the speculative rehearsals of feminist historiography. Camera Obscura 125.42 (2) Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

What should feminist scholars do with the archives of women artists and practitioners that are not straightforwardly amenable to “recovery” or “remembrance”? What are the burdens of scholarly and ethical responsibility in relation to archival gaps or absences that seem to refuse feminist attention as much as they invite it? Engaging these large and difficult questions, this article tests the limits of speculative feminist methods by reflecting on the case of women whose decisions to disappear or destroy their work challenge imperatives to completion, conservation, publicity, and posterity in the cultures of art and scholarship. Anchored by a reading of Madeleine Hunt-Ehrlich’s The Ballad of Suzanne Césaire (2024), a post-biopic of the Martinican anticolonial writer, activist, and teacher organized around Césaire’s choice to destroy many of her papers, the article broaches archival incompletion or non-preservation as not only unavoidable but, in some instances, necessary or strategic. It learns from the film’s privileging of tentative, self-reflexive acts of recitation of Césaire’s writing in theorizing feminist speculation as rehearsal: a repetitive activity that multiplies and holds open the archival gaps, breaks, and failures to which it responds.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > English, Communication and Philosophy
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > D History (General) D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D204 Modern History D History General and Old World > DC France H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Publisher:	Duke University Press
ISSN:	0270-5346
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 July 2026
Date of Acceptance:	13 July 2026
Last Modified:	04 Aug 2026 09:05
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/188502

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