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Second Wave Feminism and the Lesbian Body Politic a Dissertation “Presence in Our Own Land:” Second Wave Feminism and the Lesbian Body Politic A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACLUTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Elena Gambino IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Nancy Luxon August 2019 © Elena Gambino 2019 Acknowledgements In a 1979 Sinister Wisdom interview about the first years of the Lesbian Herstory Archive, lesbian archivists Joan Nestle and Deborah Edel credit each “older woman, launching herself into the lesbian world, and finding it,” for the archive’s existence. In undertaking the great pleasure of thanking those who have made this dissertation possible, it seems an appropriate place to begin to thank those women who came out and came into lesbianism before I did – to thank them for having launched themselves into the lesbian world, for having found it, and for having created it anew again and again. It is a world that has become my home in a deeply personal and, now, intellectual sense. I have also found a home for this work in the Political Science department at the University of Minnesota – a home whose members I now count not only as trusted advisors and mentors but also endless sources of support, encouragement, and energy. My advisor, Nancy Luxon, has been so generous with her time and energy that her office now feels like a second home. It is impossible to imagine this project without her rigorous engagement in it, her refusal to allow me to sidestep difficult questions, and her patience with me as I “muddled through” a task of this enormity. I owe her an enormous, and likely unrepayable, debt. In a significant and quite literal sense, this project could not exist without Joan Tronto’s career-long efforts to create a space in which feminist and lesbian ideas could be heard as political theory. On a more personal level, this project is indebted to those qualities that define her mentorship: care, discernment, and a clarity of thought that, without fail, reminds those in her orbit of those things that are really important about politics and political thinking. Tracey Deutsch, since the first seminar I took with her in 2014, has continually reminded me to think less narrowly about the i contours of my own discipline and training, and to remember that telling a history well is a powerful way to act in the world. Joe Soss has been a vocal and enthusiastic supporter of this work from the beginning, and it is undoubtedly stronger for the courses that I took with him early in my graduate career, where I first encountered the thorny issues of method, difference, and hierarchy that have shaped this work. As lesbian feminists constantly reminded us, no intellectual work can flourish in the halls of the academy alone; work that remains attuned to the challenges and possibilities of working with, for, and amongst others requires loving relationships to sustain it. I am lucky enough to have built such relationships in Minneapolis, my home of six years. Amy “Amisoun” Fairgrieve, Zoë Rodine, Jenna Dreier, and Kristina Popiel, Rachel Mattson, and John, Candice, and Emma Greenwood have not only been seemingly boundless sources of love, but have also been fierce protectors and keen interlocutors for these six years. David Lemke, Matt Dreier, Craig Harper, David Andrews, Yon Ji Sol, Jennifer Jodell, Misha Hadar, and Britt van Paepeghem have taught me to understand that the labor of friendship, and the bridge of graduate school, can bring people together in unexpectedly lovely ways. My cohort members – in particular, Elif Kalaycioglu, Tracey Blasenheim, Avi Muñoz, and Shai Gortler – have not only shaped my understanding of what it means to be “in conversation” with others, but have also given me the very real hope (uncommon in the academy) that the future of the discipline is bright. Sam Duling, Samarjit Ghosh, Garrett Johnson, Baruchi Malewich, Emily Mitamura, Farrah Tek, Charmaine Chua, Chase Hobbs-Morgan, David Temin, Adam Dahl, Zein Murib, Robert Nichols, Bryan Nakayama have all, at various times and in various ways, taught me something fundamental about politics and about being a ii colleague. Finally, it is worth mentioning that this departmental home could not exist without the apparently tireless labor and truly incredible patience of our department staff: Jessie Eastman, Alexis Cuttance, Tia Phan, and Sara Flannery. Minneapolis has not been my only home, and I am lucky to have had the support of many friends and colleagues outside the university. Ellen Bastoni, Cara Bastoni, Jessie Strasbaugh, Corey Florindi, Connor Goldsmith, Amanda Shubert, Martina McLennan, Cayla McNally, Sarah Sheplock, and Steve Jones were my earliest support systems; I’ve since been lucky enough to add to that list Ashley Vernot, Tori Heath, Megan Freiman, Eli Freiman, and Tara Dewan-Czarnecki (along with David, Mina, and Jonah). Intellectually, this project has been shaped by various members of Political Theory, including Lawrie Balfour, Lida Maxwell, Kathy Ferguson, Elizabeth Wingrove, Nina Hagel, Michaele Ferguson, Lorna Bracewell, Stephen Engel, and Delia Popescu, whose comments on drafts and presentations of this work have made it all the stronger. It would not have been possible to do the work of this dissertation without the financial support of the University of Minnesota Graduate School, the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, and the Mellon Foundation. The Department of Political Science, from the beginning of my time there, has made it possible not only to complete a dissertation, but to complete the one that I wanted and needed to write. The Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminar at the University of Minnesota provided me with a fellowship during the 2018-2019 academic year which, in addition to offering me the opportunity to be a part of a truly revelatory set of conversations, allowed me time to conduct my archival research. And the University of Minnesota Graduate School provided me with a Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship during 2019-2020 that made iii it possible to complete the work of thinking and writing. Finally, staff at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, the Feminist Theory Archive at Brown University, and the Lesbian Herstory Archive in Brooklyn, NY have made much of this work possible, not only because they possess the know-how to guide a doctoral candidate in her first fumbling visits to the archive, but also because they have done the invaluable work of preserving and maintaining the important collections at the center of this project. No home is complete without family. In addition to my chosen family, I am so fortunate to have had the support of my parents, Hannah Stewart-Gambino and Jack Gambino, throughout this process. Words cannot express the power of having been raised by two people whose dedication to teaching and research – and to the impact that these activities can have on each one of us and on the world – made it possible to imagine myself as “Dr. Gambino.” My sister, Madeline Gambino, has been from her first moments a keen observer of the world, a force to be reckoned with, and a loyal friend to those around her. My grandmothers, Patricia Gambino and Caroline Stewart, have – though sometimes I think they have questioned the sanity of the academy – proven that pride in and care for one’s loved ones can overcome even the most obvious differences. The newest members of my family, Spencer Philpot, Steve and Kathy McCarthy, Kelly Anne McCarthy, and Justin McCarthy, have made my life all the richer since I met them. Finally, if these acknowledgements attest to the care, labor, and energy that it takes to sustain a humbling catalog of homes, then it is impossible to imagine – truly – my life without the one that Katie McCarthy has built with me. Katie has launched herself into the world with me, and what we have found is that, together, we can create space, build trust, and move into the future, lovingly. iv Abstract: This dissertation reconstructs the political theorizing of lesbian feminists ranging from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. It argues, in contrast to the popular “wave narrative” of feminist theory, that theirs was a uniquely intersectional and coalitional politics; moreover, it suggests that the wave metaphor both covers over and forecloses many of the intersectional and coalitional insights that lesbian feminists developed during this period. Since the early 1990s, queer theorists have raised serious concerns about lesbian feminism, arguing that its central assumptions are essentialist, exclusionary, and homogenizing. In contrast to this commonplace reading of lesbian feminism, however, I argue that lesbian feminism was neither essentialist nor exclusionary; in fact, lesbian feminists promoted a political praxis grounded in confronting and repairing the harms of racism and inequality within their movement. I develop my argument in three parts. First, I show that not only is the widespread view of lesbian politics as reactionary and undemocratic largely inaccurate, but that queer theorists’ central argument – that queer theory is a more exemplary approach to intersectional politics – paradoxically erases and reduces the contributions of lesbians of color, even as it claims them as antecedents. Second, I reconstruct the diverse political claims made by lesbian feminists by turning to archives often overlooked by political theorists, such as the magazine Sinister Wisdom. I show that the practice of racial responsibility developed in the pages of Sinister Wisdom by lesbian feminists such as Cherríe Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maria Lugones, Adrienne Rich, and Monique Wittig, among others, offers valuable insights for theorists grappling with how to imagine more radical and accountable coalitions. Finally, I argue that while the political challenges posed by lesbians have historically been considered less sophisticated than queer theories, the lesbian conception of accountability is a point of contact with contemporary theories of grounded responsibility that contest central concepts of political theory such as the social contract.
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