Alexandra Gibson, previously a Master’s student in the CSSR programme and currently a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, Australia, has, together with Catriona Macleod, published a chapter in an exciting up-coming book, Women Voicing Resistance: Discursive and Narrative Explorations, edited by Suzanne McKenzie-Mohr and Michelle LaFrance, and published by Routledge.
The book brings together a number of international scholars whose work shows how women counter-story their lives when prevailing discourses are unhelpful. In their chapter Ally and Catriona argue that while the ‘coming out’ story has served as an effective canonical narrative with which lesbians can story their sexual identity, it is no longer the only narrative available to LGB people.
Reporting on narratives told by lesbians in a university setting in South Africa, they show how in particular times and spaces their participants’ sexual storytelling was infused with postidentity talk, which involved their resisting the need to construct their sexuality as a fixed or central aspect of their identity. Their findings have implications in terms of the practices of LGB activist groups, particularly in terms of the requirements to ‘come out’ as part of identity politics.
Readers interested in the chapter or in the book as a whole are free to use the attached Discount flyer when purchasing the book.