The Domain-Matrix

Sue-Ellen Case

Description

Ranges through the whole field of contemporary culture, from performance and visual theory to computer networks and video games.

"This book demonstrates Case's continued dominance of the field of lesbian performance studies. . . . Case's dense, rich, and complex work very likely will be a central text for anyone interested in debating the changing theoretical landscape for performance studies and queer theory. All readers interested in what the future might hold for scholarship in the humanities should study Case's thought-provoking work, which is an essential addition to any college or university's collection." —Choice

". . . this is a book that is enormously provocative, that will make you think and feel connected with the latest speculation on the implications of the electronic age we inhabit." —Lesbian Review of Books

". . . definitely required reading for any future-thinking lesbian." —Lambda Book Report

The Domain-Matrix is about the passage from print culture to electronic screen culture and how this passage affects the reader or computer user. Sections are organized to emulate, in a printed book, the reader's experience of computer windows. Case traces the portrait of virtual identities within queer and lesbian critical practice and virtual technologies.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

THE DOMAIN-MATRIX: CRUISING SURFING THE MATRIX

I. Re-Charging Essentialism
A. Queer Performativity
B. Burying the Live Body
C. Performing Reading
D. The End of Print Culture

II. Toward a Politics of Space
A. Semio-Space
B. Cyberspace
C. Getting the Point
D. Voudou
E. Lesbian, Siamesian Space Cadets

III. First Contact: Murderous Heavenly Creatures
A. Matricide Engenders Nation
B. Rope-ing in the Virtual
C. Swoon-ing into Cyberspace
D. The Prison of Print's Return

IV. The Computer Cometh
A. A Revision of the Gaze
B. Out of Focus
C. Blanking Out
D. Playing the Cyberstreet: Hamlet Reversed
E. Turbo-Lesbo
F. The Hot Rod Bodies of Cybersex
G. Driving My Mouse
H. Tripping into Cyber-Revolution

V. Body as Flesh Zone
A. The Body Acts
B. The Transsexual Body
C. Screenic Interrupt
D. The Romance of the Knife
E. Performing the Cut: Orlan and Kate Bornstein
F. Screen/Skin/Utopia: The Lesbian Society

CASE STUDIES: PERFORMANCE AND THE SCREEN

BRINGING HOME THE MEAT: MATERIALIST SPATIAL DESIGNS OF NATION AND STAGE

LOS ANGELES: A TOPOGRAPHY OF SCREENIC PROPERTIES

THE BOTTOM

SOURCES
INDEX

Sujets

• Lesbian Studies
• LGBTQ+ Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Película fotográfica
• Criticism
• General officer
• Gender
• Performing arts
• Cinema
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Performance
• LGBT
• Film
• Media

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 22 février 1997
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253116314
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE DOMAIN-MATRIX
THEORIES OF REPRESENTATION AND DIFFERENCE General Editor, Teresa de Lauretis
THE DOMAIN — MATRIX
PERFORMING LESBIAN AT THE END OF PRINT CULTURE
SUE-ELLEN CASE
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington and Indianapolis
© 1996, by Sue-Ellen Case
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Case, Sue-Ellen.
The domain-matrix : performing lesbian at the end of print culture / by Sue-Ellen Case.
p. cm. — (Theories of representation and difference)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-253-33226-5 (cl : alk. paper). — ISBN 0-253-21094-1 (pa : alk. paper)
1. Lesbianism—United States. 2. Lesbians—United States— Computer network resources. 3. Computers—Social aspects— United States. 4. Performance art—United States. 5. Gays in popular culture—United States. 6. Lesbian artists in popular culture—United States. I. Title. II. Series. HQ75.6.U5C37 1996 306.76′63—dc20                                     96-8059
1   2   3   4   5   01   00   99   98   97   96
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE DOMAIN MATRIX
CRUISING/SURFING THE MATRIX
I. Recharging Essentialism
IA. QUEER PERFORMATIVITY
IB. BURYING THE LIVE BODY
IC. PERFORMING READING
ID. THE END OF PRINT CULTURE
II. Toward a Politics of Space
IIA. SEMIO-SPACE
IIB. CYBERSPACE
IIC. GETTING THE POINT
IID.VOUDOU
IIE. LESBIAN, SIAMESIAN SPACE CADETS
III. First Contact: Murderous Heavenly Creatures
IIIA. MATRICIDE ENGENDERS NATION
IIIB. ROPE -ING IN THE VIRTUAL
IIIC. SWOON -ING INTO CYBERSPACE
IIID. THE PRISON OF PRINT’S RETURN
IV. The Computer Cometh
IVA. A REVISION OF THE GAZE
IVB. OUT OF FOCUS
IVC. BLANKING OUT
IVD. PLAYING THE CYBERSTREET: HAMLET REVERSED
IVE. TURBO-LESBO
IVF. THE HOT ROD BODIES OF CYBERSEX
IVG. DRIVING MY MOUSE
IVH. TRIPPING INTO CYBER-REVOLUTION
V. Body as Flesh Zone
VA. THE BODY ACTS
VB. THE TRANSSEXUAL BODY
VC. SCREENIC INTERRUPT
VD. THE ROMANCE OF THE KNIFE
VE. PERFORMING THE CUT: ORLAN AND KATE BORNSTEIN
VF. SCREEN/SKIN/UTOPIA : THE LESBIAN BODY
CASE STUDIES: PERFORMANCE & THE SCREEN
Bringing Home the Meat: Materialist Spatial Designs of Nation and Stage
STAGING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
THE BOOK OF STATE
BENJAMIN’S LIBRARY AND THE PERFORMATIVE
CONTRADICTING THE BOOK: DIALOGUE
FROM COLLECTIVE TO COMMODITY: POSTMODERN PERFORMANCE
DEATH OF THE AUTHOR/BIRTH OF THE PERSONA
QUEER PERESTROIKA
SEXUAL STAGES: FROM LESBIAN COMMUNITY TO QUEER NATION
SLIPPING INTO SUBCULTURE
QUEER AZTLÁN
QUEER NATION
“SUBVERSIVE” SHOPPING
COMMODITY DILDOISM
TELEDILDONICS
SEDUCTION: THE CRUEL WOMAN
ANTI-COMMUNIST QUEERDOM
BRINGING HOME THE MEAT
Los Angeles: A Topography of Screenic Properties
QUEEN OF THE SCREENS
THE FLOWING LOCKS OF TV
TRANSITION: THE SUBJECT POSITION
SURVEILLANCE SCREENS
VIDEOPATHY
SCREENIC DISCOURSE AS GRID
THE ICON: DUEL IN THE SUN
THE GRID: A TOUCH OF EVIL
IN BLACK AND WHITE : ADRIENNE KENNEDY
PERFORMING CITY: CHICANO CHARIOTS OF FIRE AND DRIVE-BY ART
PERFORMING CITY: LESBIAN NEON LUST
The Bottom
SOURCES
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
As this book has been produced over too many years, it has been helped along by a large number of different people. I will attempt to construct their support chronologically. First, the English Department at the University of California/Riverside dared to hire me upon hearing a paper derived from these techno-interests. Diana Taylor helped me with the sections on Cherríe Moraga and Duel in the Sun. Terry Pedersen secured my lodging for two summers in Berkeley. Several people gave me wonderful feedback at Swarthmore, where the Lang professorship provided me with time to write: primarily Alan Kuharski and George Moskos; my assistant, Tellory Williamson; Tom Blackburn, who has already discovered most of these texts; Chin Woon Ping; and Peg Bloom. Nina Auerbach encouraged the more daring experiments with form. Back at Riverside, Townsend Carr suggested the format of italic passages in “The Computer Cometh,” and Joe Childers responded to an early version. Students in my graduate seminar on technology illustrated how some of these critical passages come to life in discussion. Philip Brett and George Haggerty gave me the courage to work on the critique of “queer.” For direct work on the manuscript, I thank Katrin Sieg, who revised some of the worst grammatical errors and offered suggestions for clarity. Teresa de Lauretis provided a wonderfully critical reading of the whole manuscript in its many stages. Her example of writing lesbian critical theory continues to inspire me. Earl Jackson caught some of my theoretical leaps. Janelle Reinelt gave me courage to publish some sections and critically responded to them. Finally, Susan Foster choreographed our life together so that writing remains possible.
Portions of this book have been previously published:
The section “Commodity Dildoism” appeared as part of the chapter “The Student and the Strap: Authority and Seduction in the Class(room),” in Professions of Desire , ed. George E. Haggerty and Bonnie Zimmerman (New York: Modern Language Association, 1995).
Other sections appeared as “Performing Lesbian in the Space of Technology: Part 1” and “Performing Lesbian in the Space of Technology: Part 2” in Theater Journal , published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Reprinted by permission.
THE DOMAIN-MATRIX
The immediate problem is how, or where, to begin to write the conjunction “performing” and “lesbian” in this time of slippage and upheaval, when medical technologies are redefining basic definitions of gender assignment, even the deep structures of corporeality itself, in genetic codes; a sexually transmitted pandemic is loose in the world, taking (safe) sexual practices out into more virtual, abstract realms; political categories such as “race” and “sexual preference” are scrutinized at the deepest level as unstable, and even the seismology of such instability doubts its own methods.
The very term “lesbian” is slipping semiotically on the banana peel of mainstream and academic fashion, signifying everything from Banana Republic’s “My Chosen Family” of jeans and tanks tops, k.d. lang posing for a shave on the cover of Vanity Fair , and ads for strapping on a dildo, to a way to “read” Hollywood movies, such as Single White Female , or staking a critical, theoretical claim in the term “queer.” In fact, in some queer circles, the term “lesbian” has been evacuated. Understood as a term of the 1970s, connoting “lesbian feminist,” “lesbian,” in that sense, has been overwritten by the queer-derived “dyke”—more proximate to gay men in identification than the seemingly woman-signifying term “lesbian.” Is there a way to retain the notion of “lesbian” in technology, while still marking a material history of lesbian lives—one that might combine the theoretical tradition of lesbian feminist thought and new “queer” inscriptions through sexual practice? Could the two traditions help to bring about a new form of coalition politics?
While “lesbian” comes under scrutiny, the other term in the conjunction “performing lesbian” is troubled by the changing sense of performance. “Live” performance, still burdened with the problematic of accounting for something called the “body,” has, in various ways, attempted to construct a staging of the relationship between the body and the new cybersphere. The tradition of performance as something “live” and embodied has, throughout much of the twentieth century, been challenged by the screen. Movies, television, the computer, and new, virtual systems interrogate the “live” body and its tradition by their screenic context. In performance, is the body poised between its appearance within national and kinship systems and its disappearance among multiple screens, as in Jean Genet’s play The Screens , in which the protagonist finally disappears from among a series of them? Or is it, as in Steve Reich’s The Cave , the subject position distributed among stage technologies and screens? Will the body be tot