Narratives of Identity

The stories that we collect from the LGBT community, and the research that uses our material, can make a significant contribution to theories of identity and to academic studies of the ways in which the identities of marginalised people are named, narrated and represented.

In publications and at conferences and workshops, OurStory Scotland has presented papers on the theme of narratives of marginalised sexual identity.

For example, at Common Work, a conference on socially engaged arts practice (Glasgow 2007), an initial review of the work of OurStory Scotland was presented in a paper on Untold Stories of Life and Love with the ‘Wrong’ Gender. The paper looked at the ways in which our collected stories challenge fixed and stereotyped identities and reveal the centrality of storytelling to leading our lives.

This paper was developed into an article on Relating Our Selves: Shifting frames of identity in storytelling with communities marginalised through sexuality and gender. The article considers how we are not as narrow and fixed as others may make us out to be. Our fluid and variously bounded selves depend on context, performance and narrative. Stereotypes can be subverted, and boundaries of identification undermined, through the recognition of shifting frames of identity.

The article, exploring the practices developed by OurStory Scotland in relating our selves, can be viewed and downloaded here:

see the article >> Relating Our Selves