The author seeks to address how notions
of gay criminality are intricately connected in a nexus of history, cultural
memory and the practices of naming and figuring, through which the
past prevails to haunt the present. On the right hand
side is an image of Oscar Wilde as he was sketched in court during his
first (defamation) trial in London in 1895. On the left hand side is an
image of a man named John Marsden — a photograph taken at the
time of his 1999 defamation case in Sydney. His name does not
accompany the image. Rather, by way of a substitute, the caption ‘The
trial of an Australian Oscar Wilde’ dominates the cover. Both men are
captured in profile; a perspective that Bertillon standardised as beneficial
for archive purposes and one that is also used for ‘mugshots’. The
juxtaposition of these two images invites judgment. The singularity of
Wilde and his crimes is erased by the invocation of his name in relation
to another man, John Marsden. The images perform an affiliation and
confirmation
