e ESSAYS ON FEMINISM AND ART Laura Cottingham GB Ase anata ance Germany panne ARTS ‘Malaya The Netherland = Russe Singapore» Stara —to be, and the dean of the art school at the time was Schapiro's husband, painter Paul Brach. Conversations between the author ‘and Schapiro, New York, 1995. 8 Broude and Garrard, "Conversations," 67. =e Notes on lesbian An attempt to construct a lesbian history, whether it be soci- ological or art historical, involves confronting silence, erasure, misrepresentation, and prejudice—all of which present formida- ble obstacles to historical research and writing. How is it possible to reconstruct a story from evidence that is partial, absent, hid- den, denied, obfuscated, trivialized, and otherwise suppressed? The traditional methodology of historical research, and by extension the value system used to evaluate the quality of texts written in the name of history, is necessarily overdetermined by « prioritization of primary sources. But what if these primary sources do not exist because governments have not counted oF otherwise documented the historical subject(s); or because the social and political persecution of said subject(s) has encouraged them to silence themselves; or because prejudice has enabled families and biographers to destroy documents such as letters and diaries that contain the crucial content that might constitute ‘heaton fm Callge Art Journal (Wed 1998) 72-77176 testimony or evidence? Some lesbian historians understandably believe that more information about lesbians in the past exists than we now know of or have access to and that, therefore, more primary sources and more traditional history is forthcoming. But it might also just as easily be assumed that the availability of written proof of lesbians and lesbianism is significantly less pre- sent and existent than lesbians and lesbianism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European and American history have in fact been, Although the traditional historical practices of excavation and recontextualization have yielded valuable contributions to the understanding and construction of European and American lesbian history by scholars such as Lillian Faderman and Barbara Smith in the United States, Ilse Kokula in Germany, and the Lesbian History Group in the United Kingdom, published texts by these and others invariably begin with an enunciation of the particular problems raised in ren- dering lesbians visible given how deliberately and successfully patriarchy has made us invisible. Even more often, patriarchal societies have disallowed women the possibility of being lesbian tall, in which case it is extremely difficult to produce and leave behind lesbian documents, The introduction to a recent work by the London-based Lesbian History Group, Not a Passing Phase: Reclaiming Lesbians in History, 1840-1985, outlines some of the distinct problems lesbian historians face: Witingthe histor of women is dificult beoue ina patriarchal soi (i.e, one onganied in the in interest of men) fever sources concerning women exist and thos that do have offen een jnored as “unimportant,” o have been altered Theta ofthe feminist itorian sft to rescue women fom oblivion and then tointerpret women’seperience within the cone ofthe soci ofthe time. Tiss co tr forthe lesbian istrion Inher cs, herr, the problem of sources ismagifed a thousand. Firs, there relativly litle elicit infor= ‘mation about lesbian lies inthe pes, though probably much mor than we noe about tthe moment. Second, much imparton rater hasbeen nipped as irlevant ris significance overlooked by eklas pursing adiferent theory. ‘Materia! may hove been omitedas "priate" lite to erbarasthe fly or clienate the reader. Mucho thecidence we do have has ben dstrted by his- torians who wlfily or through ignorance have tured lesbian ies into “nor- ‘mal” heterosexual ones. Women can be gored, bu lesbian mut be expunged, Lesbions donot sully leave records oftheirlives. Those who do may not inlude ry detils hich would identi them os unmisabably lesbians.” tis after all, one of the central political problems of history, as both a philosophical construct and an academic discipline, that it can only be written—that is, it ean only exist—from what has both already existed and still now exists. Additionally, history not only depends on the preexistence of a material world of (already) lived experience, it also depends on both the existence and the accuracy of documents for and of the already lived, as well as the interpretation of those documents. Given that what history we do know is a narrative of male supremacy no matter how subver~ sively or productively we choose to interpret or utilize it, how is it theoretically possible to expect that the documentary evidence left behind could yield lesbian information that is in any way commensurate to or reflective of lesbian experience? Lesbian history invariably confronts the most profound conundrum of the basic premise of history, for it must address not only what has or has not been left behind by way of docu mentary remains (and how to decode them through the distort ed lens of the present), but must in addition confront the successful assimilation of women into heterosexuality and ask why this has occurred. For to understand lesbians, past and pre- sent, we must acknowledge that the lesbian Functions within his- torical parameters that constitute « hard-earned escape from the politically enforced narrative of heterosexuality. The persistence of such neutralized misnomers as “sexual preference” masks the coercive function of heterosexuality by setting up a false premise that equates same-gender and cross-gender affections (though