Erotic Knowledge
Toward a Lesbian Feminist Political Theory

Elena Gambino (Author)

9781478033776

Hardback, published 28 April 2026

208 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.449 kg

“Ambitious, timely, and deeply original, Erotic Knowledge makes a compelling case for why 1980s US lesbian feminist thinking is worth revisiting.”—Kathi Weeks, Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies, Duke University

“Erotic Knowledge is a rich and timely assessment of the barriers to liberatory thought and action that exist in the world as it has come to be, combined with illuminating suggestions about how we can think our way past the weary scripts of the 20th century. Gambino’s observations that ‘arrogant perception’ can be overcome by the pursuit of erotic knowledge and that erotic knowledge is an epistemology for world-making open up a new paradigm for political thought and action.”—Deva Woodly, author of Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements

Erotic Knowledge explores how US lesbian feminists raised questions about the political stakes of sexual freedom, how their distinctive political vocabularies informed coalition- and institution-building in ways that strain against contemporary queer and feminist assumptions, and how these alternative grammars were left behind in the decades since lesbian feminism’s remarkable surge in the 1970s. Elena Gambino makes the case that the past of US lesbian feminism is rich in resources not only for rethinking vital questions of sexual freedom in the present, but also for incorporating these questions into a broader understanding of the silencing effects of disciplinary historical knowledge. Drawing on archival sources typically ignored in political theory, such as lesbian feminist poetry, literary criticism, and the publications of small presses and periodicals, Gambino argues that the full extent of lesbian feminists’ contributions should be seen as a distinctive form of political analysis that which can guide lesbian feminist interventions in sexual intimacy, epistemology, and institution-building.

Introduction. US Lesbian Feminism Beyond and Beside the Waves 1
1. Erotic Knowledge: Lesbian Feminism and the Genealogies of Sexuality 29
2. The Will to Remember: Poetry as Political History in Lesbian Feminist Theory 55
3. On Publishing and Publicity: Intersectional Accountability in Lesbian Feminist Publishing 84
4. Loving in Doorways: World-Making and the Lesbian Erotic 105
5. Against Arrogant Perception: Lesbianizing Political Theory 128
Epilogue. Lesbian Feminism Across Time and Space 151
Acknowledgments 167
Notes 173
Bibliography 187
Index 197