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Theatre Journal.
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Ifitwerenotlesbian,thistextwouldmakeno sense
-Nicole Brossard,
L'Ambr
155
in whichwomanwill
justa hommo-sexuality
So therewillbe no femalehomosexuality,
thephallus,beggedtomaintain
intheprocessofspecularizing
be involved thedesirefor
thesamethatmanhas,andwillensureatthesametime,elsewhere andincomplementary
and contradictory
fashion, in thecoupleofthepoleof"matter."2
theperpetuation
forsodomyfoundin theteaching
Thereis no validation oftheancient
GreekphilosophersPlatoorAristotle.
-Michael Bowers,PetitionersBriefin Bowersv. Hardwick.
Hence theintellectual
and mythopoetic functionofDiotima:herdiscourseon erotic
desire,unlikea man's,could appear directlygroundedin theexperiential knowledge
of a non-hierarchical,
mutualisticand reproductivesexuality,i.e., femalesexuality
as the Greeksconstruedit. It is indeed so groundedin the text,both rhetorically
(Diotima's language systematicallyconflatessexual pleasure withthe reproductive
or generativefunction)and narratively, in the presumed experienceof a female
character,sinceto theGreeksfemalesexualitydiffered frommale sexualityprecisely
in thatsexualpleasureforwomenwas intimately boundup withprocreation. Halperin
citesmanysourcesfromPlato'sTimaeustovariousritualpracticeswhichrepresented,
forexample,"therelationofmantowifeas a domesticformofcultivation homologous
to agriculturewherebywomen are tamed,mastered,and made fruitful. . . . [I]n the
absence ofmen, women's sexual functioning is aimlessand unproductive,merelya
formof rottennessand decay,but by the applicationof male pharmacyit becomes
at once orderlyand fruitful."
Lesbianrepresentation, orrather,itsconditionofpossibility,
dependson separating
out the two contraryundertowsthatconstitutetheparadoxof sexual (in)difference,
on isolatingbutmaintainingthetwo senses ofhomosexuality and hommo-sexuality.
Thus the criticaleffortto dislodge the eroticfromthe discourseof gender,withits
indissolubleknotof sexualityand reproduction, is concurrentand interdependent
witha rethinking of what, in mostculturaldiscoursesand sociosexualpractices,is
still,nevertheless,a genderedsexuality.In the pages thatfollow,I will attemptto
workthroughthese paradoxesby consideringhow lesbianwritersand artistshave
soughtvariouslyto escape gender,to deny it, transcendit, or performit in excess,
and to inscribethe eroticin cryptic,allegorical,realistic,camp, or othermodes of
representation,pursuingdiversestrategiesofwritingand ofreadingtheintransitive
and yetobduraterelationof referenceto meaning,of fleshto language.
GertrudeStein,forexample,"encrypted"her experienceof the body in obscure
coding,her "somagrams"are neithersexuallyexplicitor conventionally erotic,nor
"radically visceralor visual," CatharineStimpsonargues.9Stein's effort
was, rather,
to develop a distinguished"anti-language"in whichto describesexual activity,her
"'delightin the femalebody" (38) or herambivalenceabout it,as an abstractthough
intimaterelationshipwhere"thebody fuseswithwritingitself"(36), an act "at once
richlypleasurableand violent"(38). ButifSteindoes belongto thehistoryofwomen
writers,claimsStimpson,who also claimsherforthehistoryoflesbianwriters,it is
not because she wrote out of femaleness"as an elementalcondition,inseparable
fromthe body" (40), the way some radicalfeministcriticswould like to think;nor
because herwritingsprungfroma preoedipal,maternalbody,as otherswould have
it. Her languagewas not "female"but quite thecontrary, "as genderlessas an atom
of platinum"(42), and stroveto obliteratethe boundariesof genderidentity.
In thatportrait
we recognize
theboyin thegirl,thegirlin thePrince,nota mixing
of
gendered butthecreation
behaviors, ofa newgender,"neither oneandhalftheother"
.... Intheir
loveofthesamesex[Matthew,NoraandRobin]admire their
non-conformity,
theirsexualdifference
fromtherestoftheworld."l
"Dr.Knox,"Edwardbegan,"myproblemthisweekis chiefly
concerningrestrooms."
-JudyGrahn,"ThePsychoanalysis
ofEdwardtheDyke"
"0CatharineR. Stimpson, "Zero Degree Deviancy: The Lesbian Novel in English," CriticalInquiry
8:2 (1981): 369.
"Carolyn Allen, "WritingToward Nightwood:Djuna Barnes' Seduction Stories," forthcomingin
Silenceand Power:A Reevaluationof Djuna Barnes,ed. M. L. Broe (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
UniversityPress, 1987).
12Carolyn Allen, " 'Dressing the Unknowable in the Garmentsof the Known': The Styleof Djuna
Barnes' Nightwood,"in Women'sLanguageand Style,ed. Butturftand Epstein (Akron: L&S Books,
1978), 116.
13EstherNewton, "The MythicMannish Lesbian: RadclyffeHall and the New Woman," Signs9:4
(1984): 557-575. See also Madeline Davis and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, "Oral Historyand the
Study of Sexualityin the Lesbian Community:Buffalo,New York, 1940-1960,"FeministStudies12:1
(1986): 7-26; and JoanNestle, "Butch-FemRelationships:Sexual Courage in the 1950s," Heresies12
(1981): 21-24, now reprintedin Joan Nestle, A Restricted Country(Ithaca: FirebrandBooks, 1987),
100-109.
1"See the discussion of Krafft-Ebing, Ellis, and others in George Chauncey, Jr.,"From Sexual
Inversion to Homosexuality: Medicine and the Changing Conceptualization of Female Deviance,"
Salmagundi58-59 (1982-83): 114-146, and in Carroll Smith-Rosenberg,"The New Woman as
Androgyne,"in Disorderly Conduct:VisionsofGenderin VictorianAmerica(New York:OxfordUniversity
Press, 1985), 245-349.
"SGayleRubin, "ThinkingSex: Notes fora Radical Theoryof the Politicsof Sexuality,"in Pleasure
and Danger:Exploring FemaleSexuality,ed. Carole S. Vance (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984),
309; "The Trafficin Women: Notes on the 'PoliticalEconomy' of Sex," in Towardan Anthropology of
Women,ed. Rayna R. Reiter(New York:MonthlyReview Press, 1975), 157-210. On the feminist"sex
wars" of the 1970s and 1980s, see B. Ruby Rich, "Feminismand Sexualityin the 1980s," Feminist
Studies12:3 (1986): 525-561. On the relationshipof feminismto lesbianism, see also Wendy Clark,
"The Dyke, the Feministand the Devil," in Sexuality:A Reader,ed. FeministReview(London: Virago,
1987), 201-215.
Foucault,TheHistory
16Michel (NewYork:Pantheon,1978),106,citedbyRubin,"Think-
ofSexuality
ing Sex," 307. For a criticalreading of the relevance and limitationsof Foucault's views with regard
to female sexuality,see Biddy Martin,"Feminism,Criticism,and Foucault," New GermanCritique27
(1982):3-30,and Teresade Lauretis,Technologies
ofGender:
EssaysonTheory,
Film,andFiction
(Bloom-
ington:Indiana UniversityPress, 1987), chapters 1 and 2.
A. MacKinnon,Feminism
17Catharine Discourses
Unmodified: onLifeandLaw(Cambridge:
Harvard
UniversityPress, 1987), 60.
A theory
in theflesh
-Cherrie Moraga, ThisBridgeCalledMy Back
"A BlackFeminist
RiverCollective,
18Combahee in ThisBridge
Statement," CalledMyBack:Writings
byRadical
Women ed.Cherrie
ofColor, andGloria
Moraga (NewYork:
Anzalduia Table:Women
Kitchen
ofColorPress,1983),210.
"1AudreLorde, Zami: A New SpellingofMy Name (Trumansburg,New York: The Crossing Press,
1982), 203 and 224.
called "unefiction
thdorique," a formally
fiction/theory: experimental, criticaland lyri-
and theoretically
cal, autobiographical conscious,practiceofwriting-in-the-feminine
thatcrossesgenreboundaries(poetryand prose,verbaland visual modes, narrative
and culturalcriticism),
and instatesnew correlationsbetweensigns and meanings,
incitingotherdiscursivemediationsbetween the symbolicand the real, language
and flesh.20And forall its specificcultural,historical,and linguisticvariation-say
betweenfrancophoneand anglophonecontemporary Canadian writers,or between
writerssuch as Gloria Anzaldia, Michelle Cliff,CherrieMoraga, Joanna Russ,
Monique Wittig,or even the VirginiaWoolfof ThreeGuineasand A RoomofOne's
Own--theconceptof fiction/theory does make the transferacross borderlinesand
coversa significantrange practicesof lesbian (self-)representation.
of
Lesbiansarenotwomen
"TheStraight
-MoniqueWittig, Mind"
20"Writing. It's work. Changing the relationshipwith language. ... Women's fictionsraise theo-
reticalissues: women's theorizingappears as/in fiction.Women's writingdisturbsour usual un-
derstandingof the termsfictionand theorywhich assign value to discourses.
has been the dominantmode of feministwritingin Quebec formore than a decade," .... Fiction/theory
states Barbara
Godard forthe editorialcollectiveof Tesserano. 3, a Canadian feminist,dual-language publication
that has appeared annually as a special issue of an already established magazine ("Fiction/Theory:
Editorial,"CanadianFictionMagazine57 [1986]: 3-4). See Nicole Brossard,L'Amerou Le Chapitreeffrite
(Montreal:Quinze, 1977) and TheseOur MothersOr: TheDisintegrating Chapter,trans.BarbaraGodard
(Toronto:Coach House, 1983). On Brossardand otherCanadian writersof fiction/theory, see Shirley
Neuman, "ImportingDifference,"and other essays in A Mazing Space: WritingCanadian Women
Writing,ed. Shirley Neuman and Smaro Kamboureli (Edmonton: Longspoon Press and NeWest
Press, 1986).
21ElaineMarks, "Lesbian Intertextuality,"in Homosexualitiesand FrenchLiterature,ed. George Stam-
bolian and Elaine Marks (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1979), 353-377.
In Le corpslesbienMoniqueWittig
has created,throughtheincessantuse ofhyperbole
and a refusaltoemploytraditional
body codes,imagessufficiently towithstand
blatant
culture.. . . The J/eofLe corpslesbien
intomale literary
reabsorption is themostpowerful
lesbianinliterature shereexamines
becauseas a lesbian-feminist and redesigns
theuni-
verse.(375-76)
live toys and the 1970s equivalent of s/m.28 What Wittig actually said in one of her
essays in the 1980s is perhaps even more extreme:
The bar in thej/eof TheLesbianBodyis a signof excess. A sign thathelps to imaginean
excess of "I," an "I" exalted."I" has become so powerfulin TheLesbianBodythatit can
attackthe orderof heterosexuality in textsand assault the so-calledlove, the heroesof
love,and lesbianizethem,lesbianizethesymbols,lesbianizethegods and thegoddesses,
lesbianizethemen and thewomen. This "I" can be destroyedin theattemptand resus-
citated.Nothingresiststhis"I" (orthistu[you],whichis itsname,itslove),whichspreads
itselfin the whole worldof thebook, likea lava flowthatnothingcan stop.29
31See,forexample, JudithMayne, "The Woman at the Keyhole: Women's Cinema and Feminist
Criticism,"and B. RubyRich, "FromRepressiveToleranceto EroticLiberation:Maedchenin Uniform,"
in Re-vision:Essaysin FeministFilmCriticism, ed. Mary Ann Doane, PatriciaMellencamp, and Linda
Williams(Frederick,Md.: UniversityPublicationsof Americaand the AmericanFilmInstitute,1984),
49-66 and 100-130; and Teresa de Lauretis, "RethinkingWomen's Cinema: Aestheticsand Feminist
Theory," in TechnologiesofGender,127-148.
32ElizabethEllsworth, "Illicit Pleasures: Feminist Spectators and PersonalBest," WideAngle 8:2
(1986): 54.
33KateDavy, "Constructingthe Spectator:Reception, Context,and Address in Lesbian Perform-
ance," Performing ArtsJournal10:2 (1986): 49.
Thekingdoes notcountlesbians
-Marilyn Frye,ThePoliticsofReality
--------
----------------
----------
WNBP 9~~
~
Nt. ~ i
...... .
~6~IMP
Air;
35"To Be andBeSeen,"inMarilyn
Frye,ThePoliticsofReality:EssaysinFeminist
Theory(Trumansburg,
New York:The CrossingPress,1983),166-173;AdrienneRich,"Disloyalto Civilization: Feminism,
Racism, Gynephobia," in On Lies, Secrets,and Silence:SelectedProse 1966-1978 (New York: Norton,
1979),275-310.
38Jewelle Gomez, "Repeat AfterMe: We Are Different.We Are the Same," ReviewofLaw and Social
Change14:4 (1986): 939. Her vampire storyis "No Day Too Long," in WorldsApart:An Anthology of
Lesbianand GayScienceFictionand Fantasy,ed. Camilla Decarnin, EricGarber,and Lyn Paleo (Boston:
Alyson Publications,1986), 215-223.
39"Passing,"in Michelle Cliff,TheLand ofLookBehind(Ithaca: FirebrandBooks, 1985), 22.
40MichelleCliff,"Notes on Speechlessness," SinisterWisdom5 (1978): 7.
41MichelleCliff,"A JourneyintoSpeech" and "Claiming an IdentityThey Taught Me to Despise,"
both in The Land of LookBehind,11-17 and 40-47; see also her novel No TelephoneTo Heaven (New
York: E. P. Dutton, 1987).
Whatto do withthefeminine
invert?
MannishLesbian"
-EstherNewton,"TheMythic
?
SI,
. r i
..
!.
.