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.