The Afterlife of Identity Politics: Gentrification, Critical Nostalgia, and the Commemoration of Lost Dyke Bars

Abstract

In four U.S. cities, contemporary activists commemorate dyke bars as a strategy for establishing social ties, rather than political mobilization, with other gender and sexual minorities without replicating past exclusions. Activists aim to accomplish their goal by centering two frames: “critical nostalgia” for lost bars and presenting bars and the dyke-dense neighborhoods that housed them as casualties of gentrification. By deploying critical nostalgia, commemorators distance themselves from lesbian identity politics and present that politics as a shared, if problematic, lineage that unites diverse LBTQ+ individuals. They rely on gentrification to construct a new, shared vulnerability that creates a general sense of “us” versus “them.” The article documents the process via which earlier movement frames and identities are abstracted to solve contemporary problems, demonstrates how reliance on an amorphous threat facilitates a coalitional response that does not require explicit boundary marking, and underlines how memory aids efforts to form ties.