Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Saidiya Hartman’s long career is characterized by an attention to “minor figures,” lesser-known people who are neglected in history but deserving of attention. Though primarily a literary scholar, Hartman uses the methodologies of a historian to carry out her research. Part of this methodology is a reliance on archival material. The difficulty with the archive is that the kind of material likely to be kept is the kind that dominant authorities and institutions have perceived as worth keeping. This criterion would privilege important people, leaders, and the wealthy, for instance. Conversely, this means that records of minor figures—poor, Black queer folks, for instance—is far less likely to appear in an archive.

To find pieces of such lives, Hartman must be strategic. In his essay, “The Lives of Infamous Men,” French philosopher Michel Foucault discusses the fragments of the lives of marginalized people that pop up in the archives he is studying. These fragments would likely not exist or be too difficult to find. However, he writes, “What rescues them from the darkness of night where they would, and still should perhaps, have been able to remain, is an encounter with power: without this collision, doubtless there would no longer be a single word to recall their fleeting passage” (Foucault, Michel.