The lesbian complaint: On kinship, genre and being public

Abstract

This article discusses lesbian relationships dissolutions and the stories about them. Applying a narrative approach, the critical reading of breakup stories which are conceptualized as dramas by their participants seeks to problematize the distinction between private and public, respectable and scandalous, normative and deviant, and constructive and destructive in order to discuss queer publics and some longings that are attached to them. While the contingency between the institution of family and the politics of belonging in lesbian and gay lives has been intensively scrutinized and criticized by scholars and activists alike, questions regarding the forms of publics and belonging that emerge as a result of kinship failure are yet to be explored. Building on in-depth interviews and inspired by critical intervention into questions of counterpublics, I ask how intimate stories of relational dramas are narrated in an era of compulsory happiness.