Two Case Studies on Desire and Deniability in Queer History

Abstract:Plausible deniability has presented both problems and opportunities to queer people and queer historical projects. Some scholars have avoided reading one woman expressing desire for another in the graffito CIL IV 5296. The speaker of Tibullus 1.4 uses a double meaning to solicit sexual penetration without incurring penalties; this reading has not appeared in print before. Considering the ways in which plausible deniability has affected readings of these poems, we should sometimes take plausible affirmability as a principle for identifying queer desires when we write history. This principle is explored through the lenses of post-Foucauldian historicism and queer unhistoricism.