Producing Cosmopolitan Sexual Citizens onThe L Word

Abstract

Using Showtime's The L Word as a case study, we argue that lesbian sexuality and lesbian lifestyles are produced alongside broader discourses of cosmopolitan consumer citizenship. The lesbian characters in this program are first and foremost constructed through their investments in certain neo-liberal consumer and lifestyle practices that limit the possibility of what lesbian subjectivities and/or lesbian politics can or cannot become. We offer an alternative strategy of reading lesbians in image-based media and popular culture that attends to the ways in which lesbian subjectivities are produced in a climate of neo-liberal consumer and lifestyle practices that have shifted the ways in which sexual citizens are produced. Our aim is to provide a critical framework that can be applied to other lesbian-themed television texts and to a range of other image-based visual media including film, commercial advertising, and new media.

‘It’s not at all chic to be denied your civil rights’: Performing sexual citizenship in Holly Hughes’sPreaching to the Perverted1

“…13 She decided to perform an account of her defunding, so that her audience could see her narrative in relation to broader events ‘like the calls for censorship on rap music, the attacks on sexually explicit AIDS education, and the ongoing struggles over reproductive rights and civil rights’ (Hughes, 1996: 20). As part of this account, she offers a critique of American sexual and gendered citizenship (Berlant, 1997, 2007; Berlant and Warner 1998; Burns and Davies 2009; Canaday 2009; Cott 2000; Davies and Burns, in press; Kaplan 1997; Lister 1997, 2003; Phelan 2001; Plummer 2003; Richardson 1998, 2000; Weeks 1989, 2003, 2007), that is, the ongoing struggle to gain full legal rights for gendered and sexual minorities. Hughes’s critique also addresses the embodied and intimate practices of everyday citizenship, and the role of these practices within a neoliberal regime of governance.…”

Reconceptualising Family: Negotiating Sexuality in a Governmental Climate of Neoliberalism

“…This article also points out that in a time characterised by neoliberal economic and political imperatives, there are contradictory and competing discourses operating about queer subjectivities, the child, and constructions of family. The queer subject is positioned in the broader media landscape and in socio-political and economic discourses as a targeted cosmopolitan consumer through neoliberal policies and practices (Chasin, 2000;Sender, 2004;Burns, 2009Burns, , 2012Burns & Davies, 2009;Davies, 2012;Davies & Burns, 2013), and this consumption extends to accessing foster care, adoption, reproductive technologies, the healthcare system, and education. As a technology of government, neoliberalism constitutes ideal citizens as self-managing, entrepreneurial, flexible and committed to the projects of ongoing self-discovery and self-invention (Rose, 1999;Duggan, 2003;Harvey, 2005;Davies, 2008Davies, , 2013.…”

A way to meet queer women? Reflections on sexuality and desire in research

“…Burns and Davies, 2009), but also as a result of the ongoing reimagining of gender and sexual identities beyond the definable or easily identifiable. Notions of visibility, desire, identity and community were threaded throughout the interviews I did in Toronto and Vancouver.…”

“…In my current research on queer women’s and individuals’ body image, the relation of appearance and identity are becoming more complex, in part due to the increasing heterornormative representations of queer women in popular culture, in, for example, The L Word (see, e.g. Burns and Davies, 2009), but also as a result of the ongoing reimagining of gender and sexual identities beyond the definable or easily identifiable. Notions of visibility, desire, identity and community were threaded throughout the interviews I did in Toronto and Vancouver.…”