The Marching Dunstans were a group of over 100 people in the annual Pride March in Adelaide, South Australia, in 2015, the 40th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in this state. The Marching Dunstans dressed in either safari suits or pink shorts and white T-shirts, signature 1970s costumes of Premier Don Dunstan, the socially progressive Premier who oversaw decriminalisation and many other progressive changes. The Marching Dunstans constituted a queer intervention into the collective memory of this period of social change and the inspiring leadership of Don Dunstan. This article documents the role of the various mnemonic technologies and the affects that these generated. These included the dress, placards, badges, marching, voice and spectacle. It argues that, as an embodied performance of queer memory, The Marching Dunstans created space for a radical queer community politics for the present.
HodgeD (2014) Don Dunstan: Intimacy and Liberty. Kent Town, SA, Australia: Wakefield Press.
14.
HurleyM (2011) When HIV is endemic among gay men. In: SmaalYWillettG (eds) Out Here Gay and Lesbian Perspectives VI. Melbourne, VIC, Australia: Monash University Publishing, pp. 120–134.
15.
LandsbergA (2004) Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.
16.
LGBTIQ Grant Application Form (2014) Reference 8007937, submitted to department for cmmunities and social inclusion, government of South Australia, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer Grants Program, 16December2014.
MorrisC (2004) My old Kentucky Homo: Lincoln and the politics of queer public memory. In: PhillipsK (ed.) Framing Public Memory. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, pp. 89–114.
19.
NicollF (2001) From Diggers to Drag Queens: Configurations of Australian National Identity. Annandale, NSW, Australia: Pluto Press.
SchlunkeK (2007) More than memory: performing postcoloniality at the Myall Creek massacre memorial. In: McCauleyG (ed.) Unstable Ground: Performance and the Politics of Place. Sydney, NSW, Australia: Peter Lang, pp. 177–185.
22.
SeigworthGLGreggM (2010) An inventory of shimmers. In: GreggMSeigworthGL (eds) The Affect Theory Reader. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, pp. 1–25.
23.
StallybrassP (1993) Worn worlds: clothes, mourning, and the life of things. Yale Review81(2): 35–50.
24.
State Library of South Australia (2015) An open and shut case? A celebration of 40 years of gay law reform in South Australian. State Library of South Australia, Exhibition, 18September–8November. Available at: http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=849&;c=44114 (accessed 21 July 2017).
25.
TaylorD (2003) The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
26.
Van DoornN (2016) The fabric of our memories: leather, kinship, and queer material history. Memory Studies9(1): 85–98.
