Table of Contents Acknowledgements Abstract ..............................................................................................................................1 Overview………….............................................................................................................3 Introduction………………………………………………………………………………8 Chapter 1 Identity, Recognition.......................................................................................55 Chapter 2 Engendering and Visibility Politics………………………................................83 Chapter 3 Presence in the Penumbra: Rethinking the Visibility Paradigm…................100 Chapter 4 Televisuality, Identity, and the Spectac(L)e..................................................125 Chapter 5 Exclusion as an Alternative to the Identity Model........................................158 Bibliography...................................................................................................................240 Acknowledgments My sincerest thanks to my committee for their unflagging support: Dr. Judith Roof, committee chair; Dr. Cary Wolfe; and Dr. Cymene Howe. Without their enduring guidance, encouragement, and invaluable appraisals, the dissertation surely would have floundered. For my grandmother, Laura Perez-Hill “para que así conozcan la razón de mi canto.” ! 1! Abstract( This genealogical study examines the ways in which the discourse of identity shapes lesbianism activism as it surfaced in response to the misogynistic lesbophobia inherent to US feminist and homophilic identity political groups in the mid to late 20th century. In particular, the dissertation focuses on identity politics models that are premised upon theories of social inclusion, where recognition and visibility are presumed to signal social integration. In this register, inclusion proves to be a problematic trope because it gave rise to the demand for authenticity and the democratic prioritization of the majority stakeholders’ needs in identity political groups. In the spirit of accommodation, political lesbians capitulated to heteronormative pressures and disavowed desire, reinstating a feminist hegemony that masqueraded as “lesbian” resistance. Accordingly, this research endeavors to ascertain why lesbianism was open to critique from other identity political groups and what mechanisms allowed lesbianism to be subsumed within those discourses. The identity politics models described herein are premised upon the assumption that visibility equals power. Because lesbian desire is not visibly inscribed on the body, lesbians may deploy strategies of misrecognition that make risk-aversive behaviors such as passing commonplace for the lesbian. Yet, identitarian groups used political models based upon the necessity of honesty, transparency, and visibility, making identity politics a hostile terrain wherein the lesbian activist found herself enmeshed. Contemporary theorists, however, have picked up on the importance of misrecognition, play, and performativity, but, when executed within the discourse of identity, these critical responses reproduce hegemonic strategies of containment that normalize ! ! 2! difference. This analysis documents moments of strategic misrecognition that operate successfully because of a conscious acknowledgement of lesbian exclusion from the social. While this research holds that identity political groups are excluded from the social to their detriment, the dissertation looks into the possibility that systemic exclusion may produce novel counteralignments to the regime of identity, focusing, instead, on important “differences that make a difference.”( ( ( ( ! ! 3! Overview( Lesbian activism emerged in the mid-1950s and gained national attention within a decade. With little prior public presence and a nonexistent protest network, lesbian activists aligned with identity-based feminist and homophilic groups. These groups had recourse to identity politics models that held that denigration occurs when a group or person is misrecognized. In this register, self-sovereignty and demand for rights based upon the specificity of the individual are prized: recognition must be precise, and visibility matters. Communities composed of individuals so constituted are susceptible to fragmentation because, with so many competing interests, it is difficult to achieve consensus, and marginalization of fringe elements may occur. Established identitarian groups tolerated lesbian difference, even though many felt that the transgressive nature of lesbianism would alienate members of the status quo who then would reject public policy initiatives and legislation such as the Equal Rights Amendment and Roe v. Wade. ( Despite initial intolerance, lesbian activism gained enough momentum for participants to author multi-discursive critiques of the norm of heterosexuality via a politicized erotic. Two interconnected values lend structure to the politicized erotic in toto: the desire to maintain a lesbian identity that is based upon intimacy between women; and, the commitment to visibilized “political” or social strategies to confront male-defined practices. Seen as a “natural” counteralignment to the heteropatriarchy, lesbianism became a cause celebre in the women’s movement in the 1970s. The specificity of lesbian desire was a hurdle for heterosexual feminists, however: when lesbians insisted upon the specificity of their desire, the term lesbian appeared to close ! ! 4! off the possibility of being open to difference (here, the difference of the heterosexual feminist hegemony). Being open to difference meant being able to incorporate all differences within a given rubric, and subsuming difference led to homogenization according to prevailing heteronormative narratives in feminism and homophilic groups. In the spirit of accommodation, activists deployed sanitized versions of lesbian strategies of resistance bereft of desire. Without the mooring of desire, lesbian activism succumbed to heteronormative pressures within the women’s movement, and the exuberance with which radicals had embraced political lesbianism cooled to disinterest by the early 1980s. Accordingly, this research attempts to discover why lesbianism was open to critiques from other identity political groups and what mechanisms allowed lesbianism to i be subsumed within those discourses. Identifying some of the processes responsible for lesbian feminism’s expurgation from academic, activist, and mainstream cultures brings to light the systematic, cross-generational misrecognition of the politicized erotic made possible when the movement is filtered through the sieve of identity. The identity politics models described herein are premised upon the assumption that visibility equals power. Because lesbian desire is not visibly inscribed on the body in the way that blackness and biological sex are, for example, lesbians may deploy strategies of misrecognition that make risk-aversive behaviors such as passing commonplace for lesbians.ii To combat invisibility and misrecognition, identity-based groups used a political model that was premised upon the absolute necessity of visibility and recognition, making identity politics a hostile terrain for lesbians. To this end, the dissertation examines the ways in which risk-aversive lesbians used strategic misrecognition such as passing and hoaxing to ! ! 5! avoid detection by hegemonic forces as well as push the limits of identity as a useful political concept. Lesbian activists in the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) hid in plain sight, pretending to be part of a poetry salon, assuming heterogenderal, heteronormative identities, and holding very public discussions about the nature of inversion – the point being that the DOB used tactics of misrecognition while laboring to change the popular notion that homosexuals were pathological. The DOB’s conservatism initiated a powder keg reaction in academia and in activist groups. However, the power of misrecognition was not lost on the critics of the DOB, and counter-discourses surfaced to revamp concepts like parody, crossing, passing, and drag outside of the Daughters’ fascistic tendencies. The discourse of identity informed these counter-discourses, however, just as it had informed the DOB’s activism. Identity, here, is problematic because it normalizes, coding difference and pigeonholing disruptive forces. Because identity is transparent, operates dialectically (in this genealogy), and must answer to the continuous lack that drives sublation, identity gives rise to a proliferation of constructs. In the dynamic of identity production, identities are broken down into attributes that can be mixed and wielded. In the genealogy presented herein, when gender and sexuality become understood as attributes, they lose their specificity and become co-equivalents in poststructuralist accounts of parody, performance, and performativity (i.e., Sue-Ellen Case and Judith Butler). Furthermore, members of the hegemony can appropriate attributes to masquerade as minoritized individuals, forcing us to question the progressiveness of the exceedingly visible proliferation of identities that queerness and LGBTQIA acronym sustain. ! ! 6! To tease out this phenomenon, this dissertation locates an important nexus wherein incipient lesbianism activism, the discourse of identity, and the disavowal of lesbian desire coalesce (introduction and chapter 1). After providing historical context starting in the 1950s to the present moment, the dissertation maps the trajectory of one thread in this genealogy,