History's future: reflections on lesbian and gay history in the community

From its beginnings in the nineteenth century, the lesbian and gay political movement has been linked to a search for lesbian and gay history. In the post-Stonewall period, community-based historians have been fostering interest in the lesbian and gay past and developing distinctive forms for disseminating their research--in particular, the lesbian/gay archive, the slide-lecture presentation, and the community-based audience. Analyzing the content of these forms reveals how the fascination of the artifact, the image, and the Other fosters the construction of both knowledge and identity. It is these forms of knowledge, rather than their content as such, that are in danger of being forgotten as lesbian and gay studies becomes academically institutionalized.