Women, incarcerated: narratives from India

Abstract

than is often considered. The book closes with an epilogue stepping into the 1980s to combine feminist film and science fiction by examining Lizzie Borden’s 1983 film Born in flames. Even among feminist critics, there was disagreement over the film seemingly advocating violence. Samer argues that while feminist documentary and experimental film and feminist science fiction ostensibly did the same thing – ‘engender[ing] the vast imagination of what might follow the Lesbian in her wake’ (p. 218) – they did not intertwine often, and Samer found little evidence of overlap in participation. The ‘intensity’ of Born in flames’ reception was, Samer argues, due to it being one of the few pieces of media that engages both genres and ‘reveals that lesbian potentiality was not for all’ (p. 218). Samer makes clear that this book is a reaction to the erasure of lesbian feminism in modern queer studies. They argue that queer studies, in the dismissal of 1970s lesbian feminism, in fact, perpetuates hegemonic white feminist histories, which ignored the key roles played by women of colour as well as trans and gender non-conforming feminists. Contrary to this dominant discourse, Samer argues that trans lesbians were central to the creation of lesbian feminist cultures and spaces. ‘This era does not belong to transphobic feminists, and trans and queer scholars should not cede it to them’, Samer writes (p. 33). Furthermore, they argue, ‘[t]he writing of feminist historiography need not stall in the face of trans existence. Trans existence does not erase, replace, or diminish cis lesbian existence’ (p. 34). This is one of the greatest strengths of the book: Samer, a self-described nonbinary queer scholar, argues that both the heteropatriarchy and queer studies share what Sara Ahmed has described as ‘the investment in [the] misery’ of the lesbian feminist, a figure that queer studies has found ‘particularly deserving of derision’ (p. 8). They find the current literature lacking in regard to lesbian feminists, particularly of the 1970s, and with Lesbian potentiality and feminist media in the 1970s, they seek to change the discourse.