Lex's post on Safe Space

In Safe Space (2013), Christina B. Hanhardt employs historical case study methods to explore how gay neighborhoods and social movements were constructed, particularly in relation to violence. Hanhardt makes use of multiple methodological approaches, but her use of historical methods is particularly interesting given her admission that the impetus for the book began at a later temporal stage (p. 19). Hanhardt needed to use historical methods in order to better account for what was really going on-a question that asks "how did we get here?" Hanhardt, in asking this question, takes a genealogical approach. In undertaking a "history of the present," however, is there a related question that does not get as investigated as deeply: "What happened in the past?"

In tracing genealogies ( in this case, of gay neighborhoods, social movements and the construction of violence), what events or experiences are not included because they might not provide the strongest evidence to support one's argument? That is to say, are past temporalities necessarily reconstructed when we place them in a the service of an argument? I don't mean to suggest that Hanhardt's (and others, working from a Foucauldian tradition) work is not valid. Instead, I'm suggesting that we focus more on Hanhardt's work as genealogical, instead of historical (Hanhardt, 2013, p. 16).

Hanhardt's substantive and methodological arguments come together particularly well in Chapter 5, "Canaries of the Creative Age." Here, in describing a film scene in which Sylvia Rivera narrates 15 year-old footage, Hanhardt makes use of an approach to time called, according to Jose Estaban Munoz, "queer futurity" (2013, p.198).  In attending to the substantive, or actual events and experiences around the pier culture, Hanhardt demonstrates why her methodological approach is needed even as she makes her substantive argument, that FIERCE's impact was not only bringing multiple issues together, but that their methods were markedly queer (2013, p. 220).

Hanhardt's work, in providing an example of a queer genealogy of gay neighborhoods and violence, also helps me think through units of analysis. She addresses this in her introduction, citing activists' tactics as revealing of a neighborhood's identity (Hanhardt, 2013, p. 7). Additionally, she takes collective action on as both a units of analysis and primary analytic. This makes sense both in terms of the archives she uses (what she has available to her) but also in the work that she is trying to do-call attention to the ways in which "nonpolitical" neoliberal practices are indeed very politicized.

What I'd like to discuss in class: Hanhardt's book brings multiple components/units to the fore. Sometimes this means that certain aspects of her argument get lost. For example, I felt like "activism/collective action" could have been emphasized equally with "gay neighborhood history" and the "politics of violence." Additionally, one of her contributions, in my view, is attending to the ways that empirical social science impacted conceptions of violence/activism. I suppose my question is, given that a project is always about a lot of things, how does deciding what's at the forefront impact methodological choices? Or is that in and of itself a methodological choice?