On Becoming What the Story Needs

Abstract

Abstract In this article, I use Derrida’s (1978) conceptualizing of différance to inform hermeneutic readings of my queer archive of deferrals. These readings show some of the complex ways remembered and forgotten experiences of learning, teaching, and schooling are inevitably shaped by heteronormativity. My interest in différance is informed and maintained by my active resistance to how the subjects needed by those stories can lose track of their deferrals in ways that can reposition the normative within the counternormative and vice versa. I conclude by discussing how creative re-storying can support acts of remembering, forgetting, and fictionalizing that can lead to hermeneutic insight. Keywords queer, archive, subjectivity, story, difference, normative, hermeneutics, writing, teaching, reading