Disrupting the nuptials at the town hall debate: feminism and the politics of cultural memory in the USA

Abstract

This essay argues that cultural memory in the USA, both academic and popular, for largely ephemeral feminist and queer practices is dauntingly limited. In this case, the prevalent conceptions of feminism as juvenile and/or dead must be engaged for future possibilities. The use of history to discipline feminism is not only related to structures of cultural memory that animate the mass-mediated public sphere, but masculinist desires which privilege male agents as the judges of feminist and queer practices. This paper turns to the anomalous political practices of Jill Johnston, Village Voice critic and author of Lesbian Nation. Johnston as the forever-juvenile ‘trickster’ has not fallen prey to the discourses heralding feminism’s death. Through an examination of her politics of reinscription, mobility and interstatiality, much can be learned about cultural memory and minoritarian political practices. The ephemerality of politics in the public sphere can be even momentarily arrested and available for future political possibilities through practices of reinscription. Not only is ephemerality arrested, but also new contexts for reading events, acts and histories are created. Through this reinscriptive politics, mobility is produced which can at particular moments escape the death sentence of molar politics with new understandings of eventfulness and change. History from this perspective is not filiative; it is contagious and corrosive and always open to multiple lines of investigation and articulation for future possibilities. Her interstitial politics cut across the dominant logics of histories and movements and produce something other than the taken for granted. This interstatiality is crucial in producing new contexts for political practice. Through her performances and politics of reinscription, a better understanding of the connections between masculinist desire and cultural memory can be developed. This practice, even if only provisionally, can interrupt the practices of cultural memory which privilege the discursive practices of masculine agents.