Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T02:06:54.328Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

All about Eve: Apple Island and the Fictions of Lesbian Community

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Abstract

We continue our occasional series on the actuality and the ideology of lesbian performance with a study of Apple Island, a performance space in Madison, Wisconsin. Many of the productions of this ‘women's cultural and art space’ could, suggests Stacy Wolf, be categorized as performance art: she looks at these in the context of other modes and definitions of cultural production, and at the ‘complex interplay of identity and knowledge’ which constructs Apple Island's potential spectators. Looking at both positive negative critiques of its work, she concludes that the activity through which its refusal of political and performative divisions is best exemplified is the weekly class-cumperformance of country western line dancing, and suggests through folkloric analogy how this helps to define or redefine the meaning of cultural feminism. Stacy Wolf is a doctoral candidate in Theatre and Drama and a lecturer in Women's Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She has also published articles in Theatre Studies, Women and Performance, and the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes and References

1. Abbeele, Georges Van Den, ‘Introduction’, in Community at Loose Ends, ed. Miami Theory Collective (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991), p. ix.Google Scholar

2. Ibid., p. ix.

3. Roof, Judith, The Lure of Knowledge (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), p. 120.Google Scholar

4. See Young, Iris Marion, ‘The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference’, in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Nicholson, Linda J. (New York; London: Routledge, 1990), p. 300–23.Google Scholar

5. See Fuss, Diana, Essentially Speaking (New York; London: Routledge, 1989).Google Scholar

6. Butler, Judith, ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’, in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Fuss, Diana (New York; London: Routledge, 1991), p.1331.Google Scholar

7. Quoted in Van Den Abbeele, op. cit., p. xv.

8. See Bakhtin, M. M., Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986).Google Scholar

9. King, Katie, ‘Producing Sex, Theory, and Culture’, in Conflicts in Feminism, ed. Hirsch, Marianne and Keller, Evelyn Fox (New York; London: Routledge, 1990), p. 82101.Google Scholar

10. Lauretis, Teresa De, ‘The Essence of the Triangle or, Taking the Risk of Essentialism Seriously: Feminist Theory in Italy, the US, and Britain’, Differences, I, No. 2 (Summer 1989), p. 337.Google Scholar

11. Certeau, Michel De, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Rendall, Steven (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).Google Scholar

12. Abrahams, Roger D., ‘Shouting Match at the Border: the Folklore of Display Events’, in And Other Neighborly Names, ed. Bauman, Richard and Abrahams, Roger D. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 305.Google Scholar