In "Lesbian Utopics," Annamarie Jagose surveys the construction of
the lesbian and finds her in a cultural space that is both
everywhere and, of all places, nowhere. The "lesbian," in other
words, is symbolically central, yet culturally marginal.
Challenging the often unquestioned hegemony of gay studies over
lesbian studies, Jagose provides a truly evocative and compelling
theory of the lesbian. In drawing upon the work of such theorists
as Eve Kosofky Sedgwick and Luce Irigaray, she suggestively
articulates a theory of "lesbian" spacew which symbolically exceeds
the boundaries of understanding and comprehension. Jagose argues
that the culturally constructed category of the "lesbian"--the
symbolic logic of which goes beyond traditional cultural limits and
regulations--is also simultaneously and, quite provocatively, also
the product of those regimes of power. It is this explosive tension
that Jagose emphasizes in her reading of various conceptions of the
"lesbian." In examining this construction, Jagose surveys a diverse
range of texts (sonnets, essays, and novels) spanning the cultural
terrain of Mexico and Australia, the US and France. She concludes
with a reading of Cindy Crawford as signifying the emergence of
lesbian utopics within pop culture. common: they both represent the
category "lesbian" as a utopic space, one which exceeds structures
of regulation. "Lesbian Utopics" argues that the ways in which
"lesbian" is used assumes the characteristics of a utopic site: one
outside, and other than the norm, and has placed on it an excess of
cultural legislation.
Reading a broad variety of works by five women (Irigaray, Nicole
Brossard, Marilyn Hacker, Mary Fallon andGloria Anzaldua, Annamarie
Jagose makes the argument for "lesbian" as not just an exterior and
alterior category, but one which is produced by the very cultural
laws whose mandate the category seems to defy and transcend. Using
Foucault as a means of examining the texts, the author producesa
reading which contends that "lesbian" is emphatically "interior" to
culture, produced by the mechanisms of proscripted heterosexuality.
"Lesbian Utopics" concludes that the illusion of "outside"-ness
promised by the appelation of lesbian is in literal terms a utopic
space: ("ou-topos," no place.) This is an important, valuable and
controversial addition to lesbian and gay studies, and should
interest those in feminist theory and literary criticism.
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