The institutionalization of queer theory: Where has lesbian criticism gone?

Abstract

This contribution brings to the fore the lesbian silences veiled by dominant theorizations of queer studies in academia, nowadays more concerned with analyzing social affections such as queer diasporas, terrorism, human rights and necropolitics and positing intersectionality as the key configuration of queer epistemology. Yet, I am interested in eliciting how such existing approaches can help chart queer horizons in more inclusive ways without ignoring lesbian voices. Concomitantly, I will posit such lesbian positions as critical epistemologies we cannot do without, since only by unfolding past accretive knowledge on gender and sexuality will queer discourses become inclusive and relational. Hence, this article traces the evolution and theoretical shifts that queer theory has undergone in the last decades and further explores why “the lesbian” continues being dismissed as a marginal site of knowledge and material production, enacting a closeted identity, muted by other legitimate discourses in academia. Such a move toward new queer and affective frameworks, while convincingly essential, should not overshadow lesbian criticism. By drawing on relational and affective modes of being, I suggest recasting “the lesbian” as both a textual and ontological possibility capable of embracing the variety of lesbian-identified persons traditionally silenced by queer theory’s canonical institutionalization.

Keywords:

• Lesbians
• lesbians of color
• queer critique
• affect theory
• touch

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my gratitude to Lorraine Turner, and to the three anonymous readers for their generative and thorough feedback on this article.

Funding

My thanks are also due to the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (METI), and the European Regional Development Fund (DGI/ERDF) (code FFI2017-84258-P); the University of Zaragoza and Ibercaja (code JIUZ-2019-HUM-02); and the Government of Aragón and the European Social Fund (ESF) (code H03_20R).

Notes

1 As I have argued elsewhere (Escudero-Alías, 2008), the political force of “queer” is lost when used in other countries, mainly because it is not translated, and the centrality of the English language through which queer identities are defined erases the cultural, social, and historical connotations of other words for naming queer lesbians like the Spanish bollera or tortillera.

2 In discussing the origins of intersectionality, Nash mentions several thinkers and innovators such as Combahee River Collective, Toni Cade Bambara, Deborah King, Frances Beal, Anna Julia Cooper, Patricia Hill Collins and Kimberle Crenshaw, and she notes that “it is crucial to note that Crenshaw’s work has remained a touchstone to intersectional histories” (2019, p. 41).

3 Drawing on Nash’s critique of intersectionality as an allegation invested with generosity, love and admiration (2019), my critique of queer theory’s neglect of lesbians is also carried out as an intellectual practice of affection and, as such, I hope it is met with interest and fondness by the reader.

4 The field of critical posthumanism is also relying on queer affect theory in its appraisal of complex assemblages between human and nonhuman forces (Barad, 2003; Bennett, 2010: Braidotti, 2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maite Escudero-Alías

Maite Escudero-Alías is senior lecturer in the Department of English and German Philology at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, where she teaches English and Irish literature. Her research focuses on lesbian criticism and queer theory, on which she has published widely in journals such as Journal of Gender Studies, Journal of Lesbian Studies, The Journal of Popular Culture, and Journal of International Women’s Studies. She is also the author of Long Live the King: A Genealogy of Performative Genders (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009) and coeditor of Traumatic Memory and the Ethical, Political and Transhistorical Functions of Literature (Palgrave, 2017).