On St. Patrick's Day in 1979, the Hirschfeld Centre opened its doors at 10 Fownes St in Dublin and became one of the most significant institutions in queer Irish history. Despite operating for only eight years, the political, social and cultural activities of the Hirschfeld became an important site for the development of queer Irish culture. In this article, we argue that, in the decades since its closure after a fire in 1987, the Hirschfeld has functioned as a site of individual and collective remembering, focusing the often-competing memories of people who spent time there and demonstrating the potentially contentious fault lines that can inform memory, identity and place. Drawing upon interviews with community members who experienced the Hirschfeld Centre during its operation, the research team developed a strategy of ‘close and distant listening'. The approach reflected the practical necessity of differing geographical locations and yet, at the same time, rhymed with the subject matter of the research: disjunctive temporalities and dislocated spatialities. The research team's methodology points toward the diversity of ways to recognize emotions associated with remembering queer spaces and offers an ethical approach acknowledging the researchers' affective and geographical positionality.
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