University education and the struggle for a freer future, impasses and passageways in contemporary discourses of Lesbian Studies and the Liberal Arts

grantor: University of TorontoLesbian Studies is a project dedicated to disrupting normative systems of sex, gender, and sexuality, particularly as these systems affect lesbians as the people situated at their nexus, and particularly as these systems are produced by the heteronormative curriculum of the Liberal Arts. Written from a Foucauldian theoretical framework, the thesis proceeds from an understanding of discourses as systems of language, other signs, and related social practices through which power circulates, producing subjectivities governed by their regimes of truth. In my work, I analyze the interaction of the discourse of Lesbian Studies with one of the most prominent discourses in contemporary universities, the traditionalist discourse of the Liberal Arts. The central questions of this study are 'How viable is Lesbian Studies in the Liberal Arts? Under what conditions can it emerge into the curriculum? Is it possible to do transformative work under those conditions?' The study proceeds through a series of analyses to chart the details for a blueprint of the discursive terrain in which Lesbian Studies interacts with the Liberal Arts, with the aim of identifying the key elements and operations of both discourses and the impasses and passageways between them. To do this I analyze two sets of texts: one set produced in the recent excitation to speech provoked by a sense of crisis in the Liberal Arts, the other set provoked by a sense of unprecedented and precarious opportunity to develop Lesbian Studies. I then apply the blueprint to my own experience of doing Lesbian Studies in the Liberal Arts as a course developer, course instructor, and researcher, ending by arguing for the importance of both preserving 'and' queering Lesbian Studies so as to exceed the pedagogical limits of identity-based and liberal discourses.Ph.D