My autobiography of Reed Erickson, or, how to re-member a ghost

Abstract

Transgender philanthropist Reed Erickson has gained the renewed attention of trans historians as more of his papers become available in multiple archives. While other scholars set out to piece together the life story of this leopard-owning, four-times married, fugitive multi-millionaire who invested substantial money and energy into improving gender-affirming healthcare, I take a different approach to the Erickson archive. Rooted in affect studies, archive studies, and trans/queer theories, this essay plays with fabrication and fabulation to produce not a straightforward history, but rather, an embodied encounter with the material afterlife held within the archive. Pivoting around an engagement with the Erickson family bible, this essay embarks on a trans-temporal figuring of matter and body in order to re-member the fractured ghosts of (trans)history’s past, present, and future hauntings.