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Bonnie Zimmerman Interviewed by Susan Sayer in San Diego

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Bonnie Zimmerman Interviewed by Susan Sayer in San Diego Bonnie Zimmerman interviewed by Susan Sayer in San Diego November 15th, 1994 In 1973 Jill Johnston’s Lesbian Nation: The Feminist is the definition of feminism?’ I suppose the feminist Solution 1 was published with the following question was most contested around the issue of dedication: lesbian sadomasochism. Those debates shattered any notion of any kind of unified lesbian This book is for my mother community or lesbian nation, so I think that who should’ve been a lesbian probably answers the second part of the question And for my daughter in hopes as well, which is that there was perhaps an she will be assumed consensus but one that from the very Here Lesbian Nation metaphorically represented moment of its assumption was constantly being the responsibility towards lesbianism Johnston challenged and rewritten. assumed for all women. (To me the subtitle bears Even earlier than that, I recall perhaps the most provocative resemblance to a final solution.) The intense arguments taking place around male debate surrounding the term lesbian was roughly children – the question of male children and divided into arguments for an inclusivity and female space – so in ways that I think have arguments for an exclusivity in definitional terms. become fairly commonplace to talk about in the There are however considerable overlaps 1990s, any notion of an inclusive community was between these definitions as well as inconsistencies actually a veiled way of creating a community within them. that excluded – there was always a question When the concept of Lesbian Nation was being about who was to be excluded, rather than who framed what were the criteria for access to it and was to be included, I think. That’s probably where was there consensus amongst lesbians as to what some of the seeds of the destruction of the notion forms this responsibility toward lesbianism should of Lesbian Nation comes from. take? Or the construction. It’s interesting, because as you I think the criteria were always contested and the say, as soon as the term was there, it was history of lesbian politics in the 1970s are largely immediately contested and it assumed something, about what the criteria are. There were two but also the criteria began to be defined as to fundamental criteria. First, that one be what was not included, or what could not be biologically female, and secondly that one be included. self-identified as lesbian. Beyond that, I guess Lesbian Nation is a metaphor of community which there was a third criterion which is that one be you have used, for example, the dedication in feminist, although the definition of feminism was your 1990 book The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian perhaps so taken-for-granted that it was not Fiction 1969 – 1989,3 is “To the women of Lesbian specified precisely. And it was all three of those Nation.” You also refer in your paper “Perverse criteria that really were challenged in what we Reading: The Lesbian Appropriation of now call the ‘lesbian sex wars.’ For example, the Literature,” 4 to lesbians who “look beyond criterion of what constitutes a biological female individual relationships to female communities that being challenged by transsexuals, such as Sandy do not need or want men” (1993, 139). Is this Stone and the Olivia Records controversy in the vision a practical objective or rather part of a late 70s.2 That one must be self-identified lesbian literary strategy by those you refer to as lesbians was challenged by bisexual women and the third, that one be feminist, that question became ‘what 1 J. L. Johnston, Lesbian Nation (New York: Simon and 4 Bonnie Zimmerman, “Perverse Reading: The Lesbian Schuster, 1973). Appropriation of Literature,” in Susan J. Wolfe and 2 For a strongly partisan view of the controversy see Julia P. Stanley, eds., Sexual Practice, Textual Theory: Janice G. Raymond, The Transsexual Empire (Boston: Lesbian Cultural Criticism (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, Beacon Press, 1979), 101-103, 201-202. 1993). 3 Bonnie Zimmerman, The Safe Sea of Women: Lesbian Fiction 1969-1989 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990). 1 Bonnie Zimmerman interviewed by Susan Sayer in San Diego November 15th, 1994 “who employ the metaphor-seeking defined as lesbian (1993, 10). Women, however, imagination?”5 (1992, 10). continue to articulate political positions which could be identified on what Adrienne Rich defined I would say that to the extent that Lesbian Nation in 1983 as a lesbian continuum. Furthermore you was a literary strategy, a metaphor, it worked. make the point that current lesbian criticism stands Problems arose when it became an attempt to at an intersection between lesbian separatism and create a practical reality. Questions like practical reconstruction (1993, 3). Is it therefore possible to material choices, how we live our lives in the real speak of a narrative space called lesbian? (1993, world, become tied up with the notions of 10). community and nation. There were attempts to make it a practical objective, to create Well I continue to think that it’s not only possible, communities of women, country communes, urban but necessary. In part because, as I tried to argue collectives etc, but it always has had its potency in The Safe Sea of Women, I think that a good primarily as a metaphor, a vision. I suppose that’s deal of what we have come to understand as a natural way of thinking as a literary critic – in lesbian feminism, as lesbian nation, as lesbian metaphors. Language can be stronger than reality culture was actually created by literature. Of all in some ways. the art forms, literature has been the most successful product of lesbian feminism. In the At the 1994 Australian Lesbian Confest, lesbian absence of any kind of recognizable lesbian transsexuals – some of whom had been members politics, exclusively lesbian politics, lesbian of the Brisbane organising collective – were community practices and the fact that there are ordered out when the conference began. very few lesbian businesses or spaces that have Currently, there are heated debates about sustained themselves over time, it is literature that whether lesbian transsexuals are to be included or continues to be a profoundly important place in excluded as members of the Lesbian Space which lesbian identities are constructed and Project in Sydney. deconstructed and contested and everything else. Well, I think that it’s become so clear now that So it seems to me that it continues to be extremely there are certain rules about inclusion and important to talk about what a lesbian narrative exclusion at lesbian gatherings and conferences, space, a lesbian aesthetic, a lesbian point of view but it continues to be a point of considerable might be. I have become increasingly skeptical struggle and conflict and particularly now – I’m that a lesbian narrative space is simply defined perhaps anticipating what we’re going to be by the notion of the same, of similarity. This theory talking about – as lesbian is being redefined as is very interesting but raises a lot of questions to part of an umbrella identity or concept called me about the role of differences within lesbian ‘queer,’ that nobody should be excluded and it relationships. There are always going to be becomes to me very questionable as to how you questions about the difference between – I think can ever talk about lesbian anything. So I think in this is the implication of what you’re saying when some ways the issue has been resolved and in you bring up Adrienne Rich – the differences other ways it has been opened up again in new between a lesbian space and a feminist space terms. and those boundaries have always been sort of wishy-washy, which in some ways makes sense. You express interest in the notion that lesbian textual practices create (or lesbian readers I think that the lesbian narrative space is primarily perceive) a narrative space in which writer and a reader’s space more than it is a writer’s space. reader, or writer and assumed audience, or Written on the Body 6 really clarified and female character, come together in relationship confirmed that for me. Lesbians read that novel 5 Bonnie Zimmerman, “Lesbians Like This and That: Cultural Readings (New York: Colombia University Some Notes on Lesbian Criticism for the Nineties.” Press, 1992). Sally Munt. Ed., New Lesbian Criticism: Literary and 6 Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body (Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992). 2 Bonnie Zimmerman interviewed by Susan Sayer in San Diego November 15th, 1994 and construct it as a lesbian novel. Heterosexuals fabric and that flaw tears open a space for the I think do not, or they may, but do not feel the lesbian reader. I feel like we do that all the time. same intensity of identification and I’ve listened to enough people talk about the novel to see a real I think that writers use spatial metaphors all the difference in that. So I think that it is the time in different ways that correlate to their 10 intervention of the reader in the text more than particular social positions. Clearly, Bachelard anything else that creates a lesbian narrative has analyzed the poetics of space and from a space. Terry Castle’s The Apparitional Lesbian7 is totally male point of view. In teaching women in just about my favourite book of lesbian criticism literature I constantly talk about the ways in which because she shares many of my views as opposed space is represented and becomes a force within to many of the other people doing lesbian criticism the text itself and for women that has the mixed these days.
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