“The Wet, Soggy, Boggy, Menacingly Undefined”: Queer Approaches Towards the Archive of the Bog

This essay investigates how bogs in their wet, formless, and unstable materiality become a site for queer theory and archival critique. It explores the metaphorical and literal dimensions of the bog as a porous archive, questioning traditional boundaries of identity, memory, and place. Drawing on feminist and queer science studies, this text analyzes how archives are shaped by what leaks, seeps, and resists containment, allowing for encounters with indeterminacy and ambiguity. This approach challenges rigid taxonomies and the politics of archiving, emphasizing submerged, subversive practices and the generative potential of the undefined. Thus, the bog is reframed as both a physical environment and a conceptual figure for queer resistance, instability, and the constant negotiation of boundaries.