SEPARATION ANXIETIES - Lsu - Louisiana State University

composed of more than gender (21), and that no one aspect of identity necessarily saves one
from all forms of oppression (21); that “One axis of identity, such as gender, must be understood
in relation to other axes, such as sexuality and race” (22); that identity “resists fixity” and “shifts
fluidly from setting to setting” (23); and that identity can be hybridized through “the cultural
grafting that is the production of geographical migration” (24).
Through this description, Friedman accounts for how and why our identities change and
how complicated they are. Particularly useful for my study are the ideas that critics must take
into account multiple “axes of identity,” that these axes often intersect with varied and
sometimes contradictory results, and that identity can change when one changes locations and/or
situations. In the study that follows, I will use these concepts as the basis for much of my own
specific analysis. As will be seen below, I have organized my chapters around texts that utilize
representations of a certain kind of separatist community. This would seem, at first glance, an
overly reductive theoretical approach on my part, given what Friedman argues. And in the
chapters I do sometimes use the principles of one branch of literary theory more than others—for
instance, feminist theories in the chapter on representations of lesbian feminist communities.
Generally speaking, though, I use such theories as a starting point for analysis, not as an
exclusive means of reading the texts. Part of what I will do, in fact, is build on Friedman’s
theories of identity by exploring how they are connected to concepts of place and particular
political situations represented within the confines of specific fictional texts.
I am particularly indebted to critics like Friedman, whose concepts are so broadly
applicable, because relatively little attention has been devoted to exploring representations of
separatist communities in American literature and film. However, some critical works provide a
historical/theoretical guideline for analyzing representations of a particular kind of separatism.
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