Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s by Roz Samer (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970sby Roz Samer Kathryn Heffner Fannish Feminisms. Roz Samer. Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970s. Duke UP, 2022. xii+ 290 pp. $104.95 hc, $27.95 pbk. Lesbian Potentiality and Feminist Media in the 1970sby Rox Samer focuses on how potentials and futurity are expressed in lesbian feminist media. Texts and other cultural productions discussed include independent media in film, art, and fan works that articulate lesbian and feminist subjectivities. Samer draws on Giorgio Agamben's "On Potentiality" (1999) in their readings of feminist media-making in the 1970s, extending Agamben's framework of potentiality to closely examine how lesbian futures were articulated then. For Samer, potentiality intersects with other critical examinations of queer futurities and deserves consideration, whether or not these potentials come to fruition. In examining lesbian-separatist ideologies and the formation of lesbian activism in the 1970s, both potentials and failures of becoming are equally important. As Samer explains, "these cultural texts engender new space-times from which women might love and live differently than they do in the present [End Page 297]but also suggest that the lesbian existence they envision need not come to be" (18). Samer specifically focuses on attentive readings of lesbian independent media productions, including feminist sf fandom that solidified as a distinct counterpublic in the 1970s (141). Although works from other formative lesbian and feminist groups are identified, here I focus on the chapters that explicitly concern feminist sf fandom. In chapter three, "Raising Fannish Consciousness: The Formation of Science Fiction Fandom," Samer examines the fanzines The Witch and the Chameleon(1974-1976), Aurora/ Janus(1975-1990), and Khatru's symposium on "Women in Science Fiction" (issues 3 and 4, 1975), exploring how fans engaged in a feminist critique. The chapter has two major emphases: the act of consciousness-raising for self-reflection and the use of humor in these fanzines. Samer closely attends to how fans in these explicitly feminist print networks incorporated consciousness-raising as part of fannish critique, then turns to examining how humor operates as a form of self-reflection and criticism of lesbian identities. Samer's work differs from prior investigations of fan-studies scholarship, as it specifically examines the emotional, embedded, and situated dialogues of women fans contesting images of women in science fiction. Perhaps the most effective investigation of fannish critique is Samer's exploration of letter columns in The Witch and the Chameleon. They note that Amanda Bankier, as the founder and editor of this Canadian fanzine, engaged a lesbian feminist readership with news, reviews, and information about feminist sf. A series of small case studies examines Bankier's comments and critiques about Andre Norton's work. Samer elaborates on how Bankier returned to reading Norton after reading her work as a child. Bankier critiques Norton's omission of lesbian identities in her fiction in a 1974 issue of The Witch and the Chameleonand Norton responds, claiming that she was bound to publishing standards and reviews from fans (sidestepping the fact that Bankier identified as a fan and lesbian). In addition to showing this dialogue between author and fan, Samer also discusses a similar case of fannish critique in commentary between Vonda McIntire and Marion Zimmer Bradley in another issue of the zine. Samer argues that the reviews modeled "new forms of sf criticism" exploring vulnerability and feminist ethics in 1970s feminist sf fandom (147). This "new form" adopts the prior fan behaviors of impassioned critique that would often initiate flame wars but differs in exploring the potentials of vulnerability and explicitly feminist ethics. I would have liked to see a gesture towards past proto-feminist sf fans and their critiques of gender and sex relations in earlier fandom in the discussion, but I understand that an emphasis on consciousness-raising in feminist fan circles in the 1970s would require a near impossible level of research. Samer also examines how feminist sf fanzines used humor as a way of forming a "coherent and self-aware counterpublic" (173). Specifically, they examine how humor impacted and shaped the formation of WisCon, the first feminist sf convention, held in Madison, Wisconsin in...