The impossibility of erasure of historical policing of LGBTIQ people

Using Foucault, Angela Dwyer analyses how historical narratives of policing LGBTIQ people, emerge, re-emerge such that they are never erased. The paper takes as its example the policing of Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, in 2013. Read more ….

This paper considers the impossibility of erasing historical policing of LGBTIQ people. Significant events of LGBTIQ policing may appear to fade into the past and we perhaps assume they literally disappear – not discussed, not thought about, and erased from cultural memory. At times we see evidence of an almost nostalgic contemplation about LGBTIQ policing of the past embedded in the notion that we have moved beyond that point to the future, never to return to those histories. If we draw on the work of Foucault, an impossibility becomes apparent. Foucault suggests that discursive traces circulate in discourse and they emerge and re-emerge to shape future discourses. This paper ruminates on a case example, particularly the policing of the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney, Australia, in 2013. I argue this case demonstrates Foucault’s understanding of discursive history in action: it shows how the remnant traces of historical LGBTIQ policing can re-emerge to profoundly shape LGBTIQ-police relations in the present. In addition to the case, I draw on qualitative data showing how traces of historical LGBTIQ policing are rehearsed in a consistent cycle of iteration and reiteration through the musings of research participants across three different projects on LGBTIQ policing.