Recording Now: Dutch Lesbian Cultural Politics in the 1980s

This chapter analyses national and transnational sources of cultural inspiration which shaped the Dutch lesbian-feminist imaginary in the 1970s and 1980s, using various books and magazines as case studies. These publications indicated a new, affirming and more outward-looking direction in the cultural imagination of lesbian identity and, as such, marked the onset of a decade of flourishing and visible lesbian culture and (cultural) activism in the Netherlands. An important representational strategy authors used was the enterprise of writing history, not only of the past but also of the present. As I argue, their self-conscious cultural strategies to affirm lesbian identity and create frameworks for remembrance were often marked by irony and parody. These products of lesbian-feminist culture did not exist in a vacuum, in a separatist universe, to the contrary: there is permeability between mainstream culture and separatist movements and a dynamic of seeking public visibility while shunning merging into the mainstream.