Date of Award
2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program
Theory and Criticism
Supervisor
Dr. Margaret De Rosia
Abstract
In this thesis, I explore the various, clever processes by which lesbian meaning is made, understood, experienced, felt, suggested, encoded, played with, played upon, recognized, celebrated, eroticized, and deployed - keeping in mind that these processes are rarely salient, clear, or uncomplicatedly revealed. Indeed, they are usually to be found in that sticky place of the ghost, teetering somewhere between visible and invisible, signifier and signified, presence and absence, fantasy and reality, or metaphor and referent. Querying the “phantom side” of lesbian, I make an argument for the
insufficiency of a lesbian visibility politics that strives to make only lesbian subjects visible while ignoring or effacing the obtusely significant ways by which lesbian meaning becomes visible through memory, fantasy, desire, and affective strategies of representation and enunciation
Recommended Citation
Mitchell, Laurel A., "FIND THE DYKE IN THIS PICTURE: LESBIAN SIGNIFICATION AND THE POLITICS OF VISIBILITY" (2009). Digitized Theses. 4047.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4047