Overview

All original to this volume, these evocative essays by such scholars as Robyn Wiegman, Elizabeth Grosz, and Judith Roof examine a realm as yet untouched in literary and cultural criticism and gender theory, a specifically lesbian postmodern. The essays trace, on the one hand, how some lesbian cultural theory and production foreground a politics of difference and marginality and thereby critique patriarchal and heterosexual hegemony. On the other hand, some essays note how a postmodern aesthetic, with its valorization of difference, sexual plurality, and gender blurring, assists lesbian cultural production. Among the topics discussed are the shifting definitions of lesbian and postmodern; the potential and danger of this new conceptual territory in theory, literary and visual representation, and popular culture; the lesbian in Hollywood film; actors Jodie Foster and Sandra Bernhard; and works by Jeanette Winterson, Michelle Cliff, and Gloria Anzaldua. Throughout, contributors address the interrelated questions and issues of class, race, ethnicity, postcolonialism, and commodification.

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9780231084109

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As an exploration of the relation between the lesbian, conceived within the context of cutting-edge work on gender theory, and postmodernism, a term also requiring critical scrutiny, these essays generate a rich and complex arena for the study of both terms. This collection offers new work of interest to scholars in feminism, postmodernism, critical and gender theory, gay and lesbian studies, popular culture, and literature.

Author Information

Laura Doan is associate professor of English at SUNY Geneseo. She is the editor of Old Maids to Radical Spinsters: Unmarried Women in the Twentieth-Century Novel.

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