The Present Future of Lesbian Historiography

Abstract

T his essay attempts to think through some of the larger methodological issues that currently face the field of lesbian history. It is motivated by the belief that the future of this field depends on reconceptualizing some of the issues that thus far have informed our construction of the past. Given the interdisciplinary nature of lesbian/gay/queer studies, it is odd that reflections on the historiographic method often seem silently embedded in scholarship, present implicitly in the mode of argumentation and the means of marshalling evidence, rather than being fully aired. To the extent that the historical method has been a topic of debate, it has largely taken the form of the by now notorious distinction between acts versus identity, and its corollary, alterity versus continuism. Scholars whose historical accounts take a continuist form have tended to emphasize a similarity between past and present concepts of sexual understanding; those who instead highlight historical difference or alterity (as it is termed by literary scholars) have tended to emphasize problems of anachronism, changing terminologies and typologies, and resistance to teleology. I believe that the relative weight one accords to alterity or continuism has had a more pronounced impact on the practice of lesbian history than any other issue (including debates about what counts as evidence of same-gender desire). It has, I submit, outlived its utility. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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