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This paper argues that past events of queer resistance – such as the Stonewall Riots in 1969 in New York – need to be critically inquired for their meaningful legacy and future potentiality through remembering and re-experiencing these events affectively. Considering the recent backlash against LGBTQI+ people, the paper underlines the importance of a nuanced understanding and affective remembering of historic events like the Stonewall riots for contemporary queer activism and scholarship.

The study engages with the analysis of a new opera production commissioned by the New York City Opera at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The focus of this uprise at and around the Stonewall Inn is seen as an emblematic event synonymous with what was then called “gay” liberation and forms a significant moment of collective troublemaking in queer history. Operas like other cultural performances are considered as forms of queer worldmaking, which can be analyzed as an evolving stream of ambivalent affect and minor feelings.

The paper offers an affective analysis of the performance of the opera “Stonewall.” First, the analysis provides a sketch of how individual storylines struggling with the ambivalence between daily humiliation and sexual longing assemble into a collective affective complex that layered the intensity of the uprising. Second, the analysis documents how the Stonewall-opera “re-members” the intersectional composition of these ambivalent affects to counter the tendency to mainstream queer history.

The paper’s writing illustrates how the collective organizing of queer resistance can be advanced through exploring such unusual aesthetic realms like queer opera, as it connects troublemaking politics with affective activism, the reviving of affective moments in queer history. It underlines the potential of queer opera and other cultural, popular productions to feel and live the intensity and energy of reimagining and realizing queer worldmaking.