The lesbian postmodern

L. Doan

This volume of essays examines a realm as yet untouched in literary and cultural criticism and gender theory; a specifically lesbian postmodern. The essays trace, on the one hand, how some lesbian cultural theory and production foregrounds a politics of difference and marginality and thereby critiques the dominance of patriarchal and heterosexual hegemony through a variety of postmodern strategies and techniques. on the other hand, some essays note how a postmodern aesthetic, with its valorization of difference, sexual plurality, and gender blurring, assists lesbian cultural production. In the opening section, contributors scrutinize the shifting definitions of the terms lesbian and postmodern and explore the potential, as well as the danger, engendered by this new conceptual territory. Subsequent essays turn toward literary and visual representation and popular culture to discern how a lesbian postmodern might enable an interventionist or transformative politics.