Joanna Russ — Outsider/Contrarian/Fighter Our Seismic Foundation in in Essays T
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The Cascadia Subd uction A LiterAry Z QuArterLy on August 2012 h Vol. 2 Supplement e‑ Joanna Russ — Outsider/Contrarian/Fighter Our Seismic Foundation in Essays T hi Outsider, Creative Contrarian, S Lesbian and Feminist Theorist i ss by L. Timmel Duchamp ue Antagonisms by Farah Mendlesohn Feminist Futures Out of Time: Reading Joanna Russ’s What Are We Fighting For? by Alexis Lothian Alienation and “the Other” in the Short Fiction of Joanna Russ by Brit Mandelo Books REviEwEd On Joanna Russ edited by Farah Mendlesohn Heiresses of Russ 2011: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Steve Berman FEatuREd aRtist Monte Rogers $5.00 Managing editor dEdicatEd to Joanna Russ, august 2012 Lew Gilchriist Reviews editor nisi Shawl Essays Features editor Outsider, Creative Contrarian, Lesbian and Feminist Theorist h 3 L. Timmel Duchamp by L. Timmel Duchamp Arts editor Antagonisms h 6 Kath Wilham by Farah Mendlesohn Feminist Futures Out of Time: Reading Joanna Russ’s $5.00 What Are We Fighting For? h 10 by Alexis Lothian Alienation and “the Other” in the Short Fiction of Joanna Russ h 15 by Brit Mandelo REviEws On Joanna Russ, edited by Farah Mendlesohn h 20 reviewed by Candra K. Gill Heiresses of Russ 2011: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft and Steve Berman h 22 H reviewed by Cynthia Ward 2 FEatuREd aRtist Monte Rogers h 23 Front Cover Photo: The Russ Collection of L. Timmel Duchamp © The Cascadia Subduction Zone, 2012 Subscriptions and single issues online To order by check, payable to: at: www.thecsz.com Aqueduct Press Print subscription: $15/yr; P.O. Box 95787 Print single issue: $4 (supplement: $5) Seattle, WA 98145-2787 Electronic Subscription (PDF format): [Washington State Residents $10 per year add 9.5% sales tax.] Electronic single issue: $3 In This ISSUE Cover banner collagraph of the Cascadia subduction zone by Marilyn Liden Bode n y Outsider, Creative Contrarian, Lesbian and Feminist Theorist by L. Timmel Duchamp This issue of The Cascadia Subduction couldn’t figure out what to say, how Zone is supplemental, published without to boil things down, how to square regard for our usual schedule and distrib- the contradictory elements of my uted free of charge to subscribers. For the response. In writing this piece editors, it’s an exceptionally special issue I’m attempting to do so, knowing “Russ’s work, we began planning shortly after Joanna already that I will fail. But every always powerful and Russ’s death last year. When I think about commentary on Russ’s writings, challenging, is more Joanna Russ’s relationship to feminism just like every memorial I have than a brick in the wall and feminist science fiction in general and read, suggests that such difficulty — of our city…; it is a to the work the CSZ aims to nurture and never to be easily digested or sim- substantial element provoke in particular, Christine de Pizan’s ply reduced to a summary, either in of its foundation. brilliant conceit of the City of Ladies person or in prose — was one of her Foundations are tricky comes to my mind. The medieval thinker most salient characteristics. things, especially in the constructed her “City” of every powerful, seismic times in which Since Russ’s lesbian and feminist analy- we live.” accomplished woman she knew of. Russ’s ses and theory changed her life, as well as work, always powerful and challenging, is helped her develop her voice as a writer, more than a brick in the wall of our city, and formed the backbone of her oeuvre, I though; it is a substantial element of its also wanted to include an essay about her foundation. Foundations are tricky things, socialist-feminist and lesbian activist es- especially in the seismic times in which we says that appeared in a variety of feminist live. They are invisible to those paying only venues in the 1970s and early 1980s, a few casual attention to the buildings they sup- of which were collected in Magic Mom- port. But for the inhabitants of any build- mas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts i ing, the foundation matters tremendously. (Crossing Press, 1985). Her essay “Not for Most of Russ’s oeuvre dates from the Years But for Decades,” in particular, has 3 1960s through the 1980s. Her last pub- much to say about how profoundly femi- lished work, What Are We Fighting For?, nist and lesbian consciousness changed her first published in 1998, was largely com- life and helped her find her voice. None of posed during the mid to late 1980s; ill- these essays has been reprinted in her non- ness prolonged the process of finishing the fiction collections. A writer for whom those book. When What Are We Fighting For? particular essays had been very important finally appeared, it received little attention, at the time they were published agreed to dismissed by many as “dated” and no lon- address those essays for this issue. In the ger relevant. I recall numerous conversa- end, though, she could not do it. She felt tions in which I attempted to defend the silenced, she wrote me, by her overwhelm- book against such charges, often leveled ing sense that what she had to say would “Russ’s lesbian and by people who hadn’t actually read it but not be interesting to anyone today. This feminist analyses and simply wanted to explain why they had no saddened me, but I thought I understood theory changed her life, interest in doing so. The book has never the problem. To a certain extent, the prob- as well as helped her received much attention. The lack of at- lem includes the difficulty Lothian faced, develop her voice as tention is partly due to its being dismissed but with an added dimension that has not a writer, and formed as “outdated.” But partly it is due to the to my knowledge been explored. I do not the backbone of her intractability of Russ’s ideas, analysis, and believe that lack of reader interest lies at oeuvre.…” arguments to simplification. And so I’m the heart of this silence. Rather, I think glad to offer you Alexis Lothian’s essay the problem is that it would be extremely about her own struggle with the book. difficult to convey to feminists today what Lothian begins by noting the difficulty of those essays meant to feminists at the time articulating her response to the work fol- they were published. A huge gulf of altered lowing Russ’s death: discursivity lies between then and now, a I made notes and marked pages, gulf that constrains and restricts intelligi- but I never did blog; I simply bility. This is not an unusual problem facing Cont. on p. 4 n Outsider those reading work produced in years past. I know from my conversations with (cont. from p. 3) Work that survives for decades is seldom Russ in the early 1990s that the muddling understood as it once had been, mostly be- of the point that the personal leads to the cause it is impossible to do so, given our political vexed her considerably. In “News” loss of the cultural and discursive context she warns against “feminine-ist biologism” in which it was produced. The work that and the dangers of mystification that es- does survive either acquires fresh mean- sentialist forms of feminism was prone to. ings or is read consciously as historically “Makeup, for example, is a feminist issue,” situated. Occasionally the intelligibility of she writes, “not because using makeup a work persists because it continues to be “Russ’s feminist is anti-feminist and scrubbing your face relevant through shifting contexts, as is theorization, as she is feminist but because makeup is com- the case with Russ’s own How To Suppress notes repeatedly in pulsory. Those who don’t see the distinc- Women’s Writing, which has, if anything, those essays, more often tion are building a religion, not a politics” become more widely intelligible than it derived from her own (77). She also remarks, “I hope feminists was in 1983, when it was first published. consciousness-raising will learn that a theory which describes During a recent re-read of Magic Mom- than from analysis of only sexism is as incomplete as one that mas, although I was acutely aware of that and reflection on the describes only class struggle. I hope that gulf of time and prompted to moments body of feminist theory the biological theories will disappear and of intense recollection and historical con- (to which her essays that feminists will learn that sex is an im- textualization, I also found portions of contributed) then personal appetite and quite O.K. that way, the book astonishingly relevant. It is, like current.” but I wonder” (77). much feminist writing of that day, in- The biological theories are still with us, tensely personal. Russ’s feminist theori- alas. But I think we’ve made some progress zation, as she notes repeatedly in those toward fulfilling her other hopes. And the essays, more often derived from her own struggle to distinguish between religion consciousness-raising than from analysis and politics does not seem to be a problem of and reflection on the body of feminist now for feminists — though it is certainly H theory (to which her essays contributed) a problem plaguing US politics at large, then current. The point is important, and in which a small minority, using scorched 4 one that Russ never allowed to be mud- earth tactics, has paralyzed the politi- died.