The Re-Making of Sexual Kinds: Queer Subjects and the Limits of Representation

This chapter is a reprint of an article of the same name, originally published in 2009 that discusses the importance of re-inventing subjectivity as an important analytic concern for understanding the production of lesbian sexualities. It explores the problems and possibilities with focusing on representational practices, and extends such work by analyzing the complex dilemmas, cultural logics, anxieties, and silences that are performed and enacted, particularly in the context of the hetero/lesbian. It argues that the psychosocial dimensions of representational practices might be usefully engaged by focusing on the “dialogic unconscious” that produces the negated background context of such practices. This is discussed in relation to the neoliberal cultural logic of choice, and the distinction between flexible and rigid bodies.