LIBRARY TROLLS AND DATABASE ANIMALS

Abstract

This article considers the case for a theory of the queer object that focuses on its pliability – an object which operates queerly to amplify and elaborate the context in which it appears. It looks at the case of the altered book covers that Kenneth Halliwell and Joe Orton circulated through the Islington Public Library, activities for which the men were convicted and incarcerated. It considers their activities as versions of “trolling” and of otaku database fixation. It argues that rather than simply disrupt the circulation of library books the men introduced queer objects to the library that facilitated and fostered new and more engaged understandings of the library’s collection of book objects. It reads the covers for the ways in which they connect otherwise disparate and neglected instances of texts with a virtual database of images and concepts that foster new readings of them and advance a new meaning for queer engagement with archives, libraries, and databases.

Keywords:

• database
• library
• Orton
• MPD
• queer
• otaku

disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

Versions of and extracts from this article have been presented to a variety of audiences whose different disciplinary perspectives on the material helped me enormously. It was presented at a session on “Queer Collage: The Defaced Library Books of Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell” at the MLA convention in Philadelphia, January 2017, organized by Ashley Shelden, chaired by Joseph Litvak, and where I spoke with Ashley and Emma Parker. I presented an early version at the Book:Logic conference at the University of Newcastle at the invitation of Patricia Pender and Rosalind Smith, and at The Image In Question conference at Sydney College of the Arts at the invitation of John di Stefano. I presented a draft version of the article to the English Department Research Seminar at the University of Sydney. I presented a version of the article at the Queer Objects Symposium organized by Monique Rooney at the ANU. Research for the article was assisted by the librarians at the Islington Library and Museum. Thanks to Sam Dickson for his work on Blow-Up and the opportunity to discuss this film with him at length. Thanks to Kate Lilley for lots of things.

1 “Queer is a continuing moment, movement, motive – recurrent, eddying, troublant. The word ‘queer’ itself means across – it comes from the Indo-European root -twerkw, which also yields the German quer (transverse), Latin torquere (to twist), English athwart” (Sedgwick, Tendencies xii). Alluded to in Wiegman and Wilson (12).

2 In my conjecture of a “queer” that is not “athwart” but rather provides apertures of access, I am both following and moving away from the discussion of “anti-normativity” offered by Wiegman and Wilson, for whom it is important to find “value” in commitments beyond one to “anti-normativity” (1) but for whom the movement “athwart” is distinct from “against” (11). For Wiegman and Wilson, “athwart” is a “more intimate and complicit gesture” (12) than “against.” This article is interested in a queer that lessens resistance rather than one that “troubles,” torques, or otherwise impedes flow.

3 See Parker for more on these collages and the way in which they amplify and illuminate a critical take on Shakespeare that irreverently resists his gentrification.

4 In fact, Azuma refers to “otaku-like” culture, an important modification for my purposes: already the figure that Azuma describes is an abstraction contextualized by but distinct from its immediate historical context.

5 Azuma notes “The term moe is used within otaku jargon to refer to the strong sense of sympathy felt toward anime characters. Within the otaku world, moe has come to point to a longing for something in particular” (128).

6 See Hardie.