~eorizing Histories of Rhetoric edi d ' te,,I arch Cen~er's Social & Demogra J . h.org/social-trends/2021 /03/ 251 ~ Politics of Visibility" Qu . • eering i!tt etal.,NewYorkUP,2016,pp. 24 ~ g/qhs/ Jry and Pedagogy." Rhetoric & l¼!fk lural Formations of Lesbian" r • JOUn,g/ 10 THE TRANS RHETORICAL PRACTICE OF ARCHIVE BUILDING K.J. Rawson fethaps unsurprisingly, the emergent work in transgender rhetorics has been carefully attuned a:,nsiderations of who gets to speak and under what conditions. In their introduction to a :i.tl issue of Peitho focused on "Transgender Rhetorics," GPat Patterson makes a compelling for the viability of this area of study, noting that "trans people are crafting arguments that, '3uite frankly, need listened to, because cis culture's profound lack of imagination about the ways :,ender is weaponized and racialized doesn't just result in terrible arguments-it results in danger, precarity, and soul murder for gender-expansive people" (Patterson). The creation of archives is ouc,Jj>edfic way to support trans people's stories being heard and treated with the respect and care they deserve; given the stakes that Patterson elucidates, the exigence for this work could not be J11y clearer. This is a well-worn path for many subfields in rhetorical studies, where the process of building an ma of study often includes what Royster and Kirsch, in discussing feminist rhetoric, refer to as the "three R's": "rescue, recovery, and (re)inscription" (14). The development of trans-specific archival collections can be used to support "rescue, recovery, and (re)inscription" as they allow for new and dC:l'_Per considerations of trans rhetorical practices that have been developed and enacted by trans people themselves. Such historically focused work on trans rhetorics has already begun to emerge, ind.uding a section on recovery from the special issue of Peitho on Transgender Rhetorics, as well as scholarship such as Joe Edward Hatfield's "The Queer Kairotic," which considers trans rhetorical a~ency in the context of how trans teens craft their digital afterlives. 1 Yet trans archives also set out to accomplish far more than the creation of streamlined gateways to the past. In this chapter, I will focus on two trans archival projects-the Black Trans Archive ltf.ld the Digital Transgender Archive-to argue for archive building as a form of trans rhetorical pr.ictice. For most, the concept of archives conjures imagery of long rows of shelves lined with neatly 11rranged boxes full of organized records of the past. If you visit the Black Trans Archive web- lite expecting to find a digital approximation of this-a searchable digital repository of historical documents, for example-you will be quite surprised by what you encounter. Danielle Brathwaite- Shirley's project was originally released and exhibited in 2020 at the Science Gallery in London under the title "We Are Here Because ofThose That Are Not." The project was created in a thor- oughly collaborative way as Brathwaite-Shirley worked with other Black trans people and with a ttans youth group hosted by Metro Transcend. Throughout the process, collaborators maintained DOI: 10.4324/9781003144809- ll 77