Feminism’s Queer Temporalities

179 Pages·2016·17.6 MB·English

by  Sam McBean

’
Feminism s Queer Temporalities
Despite feminism’s uneven movements, it has been predominantly understood
through metaphors of generations or waves. Feminism’s Queer Temporalities
builds on critiques of the limitations of this linear model to explore alter-
nativeways ofimagining feminism’s timing. It finds in feminism’s literaryand
cultural archive narratives of temporality that might now be diagnosed as
queer, where queer designates modes of being historical that exceed the linear
and the generational.
Fewtheoristshavelookedtopopularfeministfigures,literature,andculture
to theorize feminism’s timing. Through methodologically creative readings,
McBean explores non-generational, anti-linear, and asynchronous time in the
figureofAntigone,MargePiercy’sWomanontheEdgeofTime,thefilmLadies
and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, Valerie Solanas and SCUM Manifesto,
and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.
Thefirsttosubstantiallybringtogetherthewaysinwhichtimehascometo
matter in both feminist and queer disciplines, this book will appeal to students
and scholars offeminist, queer and gender studies, cultural studies and literary
studies.
Sam McBean is Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary American Literature
at Queen Mary University of London. She has published on contemporary
literature, new media, queer theory, and feminist theory in journals including
Feminist Review, Camera Obscura, and the Journal of Lesbian Studies.
“How does feminism reproduce itself? How can we think feminist history
outside the limiting framework of generations and waves? Deeply engaged
with recent work on the politics of time, Feminism’s Queer Temporalities
turns to an archive of feminist popular culture to imagine alternative futures
for the field.”
—Dr Heather Love, University of Pennsylvania, USA
“It is quite some time since I encountered new work in literary and cultural
studies that feels as eye-opening and necessary as Feminism’s Queer Tempor-
alities. McBean’s groundbreaking transmedial analysis – ranging from
women’s lib classics to graphic novels and film – demonstrates the ways in
which queer temporalities have been central to the creation and operation of
post-1960s feminist aesthetics. Rather than performing a rapprochement
between feminist art and queer temporality, McBean charts an aesthetic
landscape in which this distinction cannot be traced with ease, and in the
process stages a crucial rethinking of the relations between these disciplines.”
—Dr Jane Elliott, King’s College London, UK
“At the center of Feminism’s Queer Temporalities is the deceptively simple
but brilliant observation that feminism is a matter of timing. This is a book
that lays to rest once and for all the misconception that feminist and queer
theoryaregenerationalantagonists locked in adramaof disidentification and
forgetting.Through richlyoriginal readingsof herarchiveof popularfeminist
texts, McBean instead argues for the queerness of feminism’s preoccupation
with temporality. For McBean, belonging to feminism is a matter of being
with its untimeliness.”
—Dr Victoria Hesford, Stony Brook University, USA
“Feminism’s Queer Temporalities cuts through misplaced assumptions that
queer critical debates have somehow replaced or updated feminist ones and
offers instead a more nuanced take on the recent history of this complex
dynamic.Afreshandexcitingnewvoiceinthesedebates,SamMcBeanshows
how temporality can provide an illuminating conceptual focus for cultural
analysis. Challenging the generational model of feminism and the methodol-
ogy of contextualisation, McBean moves us through eloquent readings of the
mythical figure of Antigone in feminist theory, the SCUM manifesto and
Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home. Breaking down the usual division
of theories and texts, McBean’s approach demonstrates just how inter-
disciplinary scholarship can reconfigure the temporal scales of both politics
and culture. This book places feminism at the heart of the current attempt to
rethink temporality across the humanities.”
—Professor Jackie Stacey, Universityof Manchester, UK
Transformations: Thinking Through Feminism
Edited by:
Maureen McNeil, Institute of Women’s Studies, Lancaster University
Lynne Pearce, Department of English, Lancaster University
Other books in the series include:
Transformations: Thinking Haunted Nations: The Colonial
Through Feminism Dimensions of Multiculturalisms
Edited by Sarah Ahmed, Sneja Gunew
Jane Kilby, Celia Lury,
Maureen McNeil and The Rhetorics of Feminism:
Beverley Skeggs Readings in Contemporary
Cultural Theory and the
Thinking Through the Skin Popular Press
Edited by Sara Ahmed and Lynne Pearce
Jackie Stacey
Women and the Irish Diaspora
Strange Encounters: Embodied Breda Gray
Others in Post-Coloniality
Sara Ahmed Jacques Lacan and Feminist
Epistemology
Feminism and Autobiography: Kirsten Campbell
Texts, Theories,
Methods Judging the Image: Art, Value, Law
Edited by Tess Cosslett, Celia Lury Alison Young
and Penny Summerfield
Sexing the Soldier
Advertising and Consumer Rachel Woodward and Trish
Citizenship: Gender, Images and Winter
Rights
Anne M. Cronin Violent Femmes: Women as Spies in
Popular Culture
Mothering the Self: Mothers, Rosie White
Daughters, Subjects
Stephanie Lawler Pregnancy, Risk and Biopolitics:
On the Threshold of the Living
When Women Kill: Questions of Subject
Agency and Subjectivity Lorna Weir
Belinda Morrissey
Feminist Cultural Studies of
Class, Self, Culture Science and Technology
Beverley Skeggs Maureen McNeil
Arab, Muslim, Woman: Voice and Gender, Sexuality and
Vision in Postcolonial Literature Reproduction in Evolutionary
and Film Narratives
Lindsey Moore Venla Oikkonen
Secrecy and Silence in the Research Feminism’s Queer Temporalities
Process: Feminist Reflections Sam McBean
Róisín Ryan-Flood and Rosalind Gill
Forthcoming:
Working with Affect in Feminist
Readings: Disturbing Differences
Marianne Liljeström and Irish Feminist Futures
Susanna Paasonen Claire Bracken
Feminism, Culture and Embodied Sociability, Sexuality,
Practice: The Rhetorics of Self: Relationality and
Comparison Individualization
Carolyn Pedwell Sasha Roseneil
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Feminism s Queer Temporalities
Sam McBean
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Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
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andbyRoutledge
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RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2016SamMcBean
TherightofSamMcBeantobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen
assertedbyherinaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,
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Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproduced
orutilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,
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withoutintenttoinfringe.
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData
AcataloguerecordforthisbookisavailablefromtheBritishLibrary
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
McBean,Sam.
Feminism’squeertemporalities/SamMcBean.
pagescm.--(Transformations:thinkingthroughfeminism)
Includesbibliographicalreferences.
1.Feministtheory.2.Feministliterature.3.Feminismandmassmedia.
4.Queertheory.I.Title.
HQ1190.M3842015
305.42--dc23
2015002395
ISBN:978-1-138-79365-1(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-76101-5(ebk)
TypesetinTimesNewRoman
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
Contents
List of figures viii
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1 Dragging the not-yet: archiving Antigone 25
2 Loss and futurity: Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time 49
3 ‘I’m awaste of time’: riot grrrl and Ladies and Gentlemen,
the Fabulous Stains 72
4 The feminist manifesto: Valerie Solanas and SCUM 97
5 Learning to see: Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home 121
Conclusion 148
Bibliography 153
Index 165
fi
List of gures
1.1 Antigone crawling out of the television, Antigone 34
3.1 Corinne ‘Third Degree’ Burns, Ladies and Gentlemen,
the Fabulous Stains 75
3.2 Skunks, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains 91
5.1 Alison discovers the pinup, Fun Home 130
5.2 Alison unrolls the pinup, Fun Home 131
5.3 Alison watches her brothers, Fun Home 131
5.4 Alison and Bruce in front of the mirror, Fun Home 136
5.5 Photo comparison, Fun Home 138
5.6 Still from Lisa Oppenheim, The Sun Is Always Setting
Somewhere Else 143
Acknowledgements
I want to take the time here to acknowledge the multiple people whose sup-
port,generosity,andfriendshipinfluencednotonlytheargumentsinthebook
but fundamentally gave me the courage to make these arguments. The
research for this book began when I was a PhD student in the English and
Humanities Department at Birkbeck, Universityof London. First thanks need
togo to my thesis supervisor, Heike Bauer. Thankyou for always encouraging
metobetwostepsaheadofwhereIthoughtIwascapableofbeing.Iwantto
also thank the postgraduate community at Birkbeck for never making doing
a PhD feel like a lonely pursuit. I had the particular privilege to work
alongside some of the smartest people I know, Zara Dinnen, Bianca Leggett,
and Holly Pester.I cannot imaginean academic life thatdoes not includeour
never-ending email chains and as many brunches as we can stomach. I want
to thank as well all of the participants in the Feminist Reading Group at the
Institute of English Studies, and particular thanks go to Elsa Richardson for
being an amazing co-organizer. This has been and continues to be one of my
favouritespacestotestideas,getthingswrong,andrevelinhowfunfeminism
can be. It has been avital space that pulls me out of my solitary pursuits and
reminds me of the collective potential of academic feminism.
I want to thank the numerous individuals who, whether by reading early
versions of this workor by just being there, were integral to this book’s com-
pletion, including: Kate Atkinson, Simon Avery, Gianfranco Bettocchi,
Jeanette Chua, Ellie Gore, Carly Guest, Victoria Hesford, Rahim Jamal,
Lydia Malmedie, Ania Ostrowska, and Jessica Southgate. Special thanks go
to Jackie Stacey for her intellectual rigour and herongoing support aswell as
to Jane Elliott for her encouragement, her generosity, and her laugh. Sadie
Wearing has been an ongoing source of support as a dissertation supervisor,
then as a colleague, and now, as a friend.
I feel incredibly lucky to be able to be included in the Transformations
series alongside preeminent scholars in the field. Lynne Pearce and Maureen
McNeil have shown such faith in this project from the beginning and have
been absolutely incredible to work with. Emily Briggs from Routledge has
been a joy of an editor and the whole production team made the process
much smoother than I could have imagined.