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I'm going to start with the observation that the term lesbian is contested. One of the reasons why lesbian is contested is that lesbian history, as a field, often confuses the identity, as a container, with the community or social form that engages that identity. Historians wonder: Does someone have to verbally identify as a lesbian to be part of a lesbian community? Can we call a community lesbian if people don't use that term?
I would argue that lesbian history is actually the history of an idea rather than a group of people. Lesbian history includes all those involved in the discursive production of the category; that is, it includes all of the actors and institutions that participate in the production of meanings that contribute to the articulation and rearticulation of the concept lesbian, as it changes over time and moves across space.
One way that lesbian as an idea moves across time and space is as part of the process of the globalization of Western culture and capital-as an aspect of neocolonialism. But the concept of the lesbian as a kind of person is also transported and consumed via transnational media, moving in many directions. It is also transported and consumed via the realignment of capital. Clearly, the possible meanings of the category lesbian change in a transnational context, and they may change in a way that's useful to those doing the importing or consuming. So I wouldn't necessarily argue that every time the idea of the lesbian as a kind of person is taken up in a non-Western context that it's a neocolonial cultural form. However, I would assume that when the term lesbian is taken up in a non-Western context, it probably means something different than it did in a Western colonial context. But even in a Western colonial context ideas are going to mutate or be transformed or utilized in new ways any time that global capital forces the movement of people and the rearticulation of ideas about family and sexuality. All these forces work together to produce transnational cultures that reframe the meanings of...