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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 8h

Omg just found these screenshots on Lesbian Ghosts in my camera roll from March 2024!!

Connections with ghosts & sirens feels resonant with the TLOAS imagery recently 🧜🏻‍♀️👻

Terry Castle
THE APPARITIONAL
LESBIAN
(BOOKS)
The Apparitional Lesbian
Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture
Columbia University Press, 1993
Order from the publisher, Columbia University Press, or go to Terry Castle's Page on Amazon.com.
TERRY CASTLE
(SEE REVIEWERS' COMMENTS)
(FROM THE DUSTJACKET)
"Lesbianism-what Terry Castle calls the 'ghost' of sexual love between women-has haunted Western literature and culture since the eighteenth century. Despite the frequency with which female-female sexuality has been denied or obscured, Castle sees lesbianism as a central motif in the Western imagination. In a series of wide-ranging essays-on literary images of lesbianism from Defoe and Diderot to Virginia Woolf and Djuna Barnes, on the homosexual reputation of Marie Antoinette, on the lesbian writings of Anne Lister, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Janet Flanner, and on Henry James's The Bostonians-Castle shows how a lesbian presence can be identified in the literature, history, and culture of the past three centuries. Castle also includes two personal essays: 'First Ed,' a lyrical tribute to a long-forgotten lesbian 'ghost,' and 'In Praise of Brigitte Fassbaender,' on coming out as a lesbian opera fan.
"In The Apparitional Lesbian, a book for anyone interested in lesbianism and its role in the imaginative life and literature of the West, the lesbian is brought back into focus—in all her worldliness, comedy, and complexity."
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Desiring Identifications with the Past
Some days I have little interest in the abstract "Lesbian."
I want mine with skin (...]
-Meese （1992: 130）
At a forum on her book Getting Medieval (1999), Dinshaw relayed a comment by one of her students who noted that many people experience their first 'queer' encounter textually rather than sexually:
As is true for many queers [...] my queer sexuality was first articulated not through a relationship with another body but rather through texts [...] I consumed such texts urgently ... I was looking for a way to be queer, for a way to fashion my own identity [...] Queer history is my queer present. (Richard Kim cited in Dinshaw 2001: 202-203)
Similarly, we observe Sara T.'s urgent consumption of written accounts of Vivien's life as well as her work: '¿On cercar-te, si no en els mots, els teus, els dels altres, els meus mateixos, llançats, com una canilla mal ensinistrada, a la caça i captura d'un fantasma?' (91). Texts are one way that readers and writers can connect with their 'spectral' predecessors in order to shape and understand their own existence in the present. In The Apparitional Lesbian (1993), published a year before La passió, Castle considers the 'ghosting' of lesbians in history. She views her essays as 'a kind of invocation: an attempt to call up, precisely by confronting the different kinds of denial and disembodiment with which she is usually associated, the much-ghosted yet nonetheless vital lesbian subject (8).
However, the language used by the reader-writer figure, Sara T., highlights the ambivalence in her reaction to the 'fantasma' of the writer from the past. The simile in which Sara T. likens her words and those of others to an untamed pack of dogs — 'com una canilla mal ensinistrada' - reveals the lack of control she has over them. She thus hints at the posibility of writers also being h(a)unted against their will, or possessed by something or someone beyond their conscious control.
Sara T.'s 'ghost-hunti…

kaleidoscope - but the precise composition of the fragments is beyond her full control, both within her own work, and within the imaginaries of her readers.
In 'Sappho Enchants the Sirens' (1904) Vivien describes the sensation of feeling entangled in the seductive past. She refers to a sense of captivation beyond deliberative desire; the 'silvery nets' (Vivien cited in Reynolds 2000: 300) of the past are appealing and the writer may seek them, but they can also entrap her: "The Past, more alive than the Present, and more resonant, will catch you in its silvery nets. You will be held captive by dreams and by long-vanquished harmonies' (ibid.). The
"living" past hints at an 'affective connection — a touch across time' (Dinshaw 2001: 203) and 'the intentional collapse of conventional historical time' (ibid.) that are vital to Dinshaw's vision of queer history and community. Dinshaw sees the affective connection as 'an enabling concept with which readers could work in order to respond to their own situations —their places in space and time— and their needs and desires for a past' (ibid.). In the general plan for the novel that Marçal sent to the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes to request funding, she writes that the objective of the novel is not la recreació d'un ambient, que malgrat tot hi ha d'ésser com a teló de fons, una evocació del

Some critics see Vivien as having been compelled to write by spirits, such as that of Violet Shilitto, Vivien's childhood friend who died in her twenties. Vivien did not go to visit her when she was on
her death-bed as she was reportedly absorbed in her relationship with Barney. Her guilt at abandoning her childhood friend in her last hour seems to have tormented her throughout her life, leading her to scatter violets, as tokens of Shilitto, throughout her poetry. In the foreword to Teresa Campi's Sul ritmo saffico: La vita e le opere di Renée Vivien (1983), which introduced Vivien to Italian readers, Jean Paul-Goujon, a biographer of Vivien, described her as 'una autrice, la cui opera è un caleidoscopo dei suoi fantasmi personali' (12). Again, the reference to ghosts "conjures up" the image of a sort of presence through absence that may be unwanted. However, it is also these 'ghosts' or visions that inspire Vivien's 'kaleidoscopic' work, an adjective which gives the impression of shifting, mesmerising rearrangements of beautiful fragments, including those of Sappho.
Kaleidoscopic also emphasises the importance of visual images for Vivien. Vivien may trigger the creation of the 'beautiful forms' through her act of writing - akin to a twisting, a queering of the kaleidoscope - but the precise composition of the fragments is beyond her full control, both within

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 12h

Gaylor Body Doubling in 30 minutes - get sh*t done with other Gaylors whilst listening to a playlist we create together 🧹🧼🧺🎧🎶💃🏼🕺

buytickets.at/friendsofdor...

Buy Tickets – Body Doubling – Zoom

Body Doubling – Zoom, Multiple dates and times - These body doubling sessions are a place where folx can have company to motivate themselves to get tasks done, especially catered for people who are st...

buytickets.at

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Reposted by Tess

amanda 🌈🍉 @debutlor.bsky.social · 2d

this makes me like ruin the friendship more ngl. she’s an unreliable narrator

lyrics from Ruin the Friendship by Taylor Swift

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 17h

If you haven’t been to a live event with Gaylors before, whether it’s in person or online, I’d highly recommend it. It grounds something in me & makes the community feel real and human in times when there’s friction. I’m not the only one who hosts spaces so there are options!

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 17h

Thank you Carolyn & to all the Gaylors who came along yesterday.

It was lovely to be reminded that nuance & different opinions & people’s emotional responses can be held in such a different way in a live space, even if it is still online. A markedly different response in my nervous system ✨

Carolyn (they/she) @carolynwill.bsky.social · 1d

thank you @invisiblethemes.bsky.social for hosting thoughtful spaces for gaylors to come together in for much-needed community during times of uncertainty!

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

This is happening in an hour! Lower cost tix currently available. We’re going to meditate together, soothe our nervous systems with some movement & speak together as a community. Anyone who’s a Friend of Dorothea is welcome to join ❤️

Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 2d

Oops here’s the link to register: buytickets.at/friendsofdor...

Select tickets – Gaylor Coffeehouse - Join us for a "Cup O' Joe" – Zoom

Gaylor Coffeehouse - Join us for a "Cup O' Joe" – Zoom, Multiple dates and times - Why have "coffee all alone" when you can share a Cup O' Joe with fellow Friends of Dorothea? Inspired by the "treat c...

buytickets.at

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

Ooh yes! As someone who used to never be in my body and only rely on my brain to navigate the world, I’d be happy to help. I’ve just left my house now so can’t send you pics from this book but he has so so many somatic exercises in there. I’ll post some when I get home!

Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

I genuinely couldn’t either - it’s been frustrating me until this moment!

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

Time away from my phone has been deeply nourishing - I’ve done somatic work & it feels like I’ve rinsed out so much cortisol.

If you’re doing anti-racism work & want a guide that centres how much is stored in the nervous system, I couldn’t recommend Resmaa Menakem’s “My Grandmother’s Hands” enough

My
Grandmother's
Hands
Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies
RESMAA MENAKEM

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

Omg this was the second post I saw after just posting the same lyrical connection - hive mindddddd

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

Also looking at the lyrics for Castles Crumbling again has me seeing the “foes & friends” connection with Opalite, interesting!

THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL
Opalite Line 11 [Pre-Chorus]
And, "When you don't, you don't"
And all of the foes, and all of the friends (Ha, ha)
They've seen it before, they'll see it again (Ha, ha)

THE LIFE OF A SHOWGIRL
Opalite Line 35 [Pre-Chorus]
You're starving til you're not
And all of the foes and all of the friends (Ha, ha)
Have messed up before, they'll mess up again (Ha, ha)

SPEAK NOW (TAYLOR'S VERSION)
Castles Crumbling (Taylor's Version) [From The
Vault] Line 22 [Bridge: Taylor Swift]
You don't wanna know me now
My foes and friends watch my reign end
I don't know how it could've ended this way

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Tess @invisiblethemes.bsky.social · 1d

I don’t think this was planned but far out this feels like a timely date parallel to me 😬

Lyrics for castles crumbling on a purple background:

Now they're screaming at the palace front gates, used to chant my name Now they're screaming that they hate me
Never wanted you to hate me My castle's crumbling down

The castle in the Bejeweled music video, dragons breathing fire and causing some of her castle to crumble

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Reposted by Tess

souperman 🦸🍲 @souperman26.bsky.social · 2d

mark your calendar for 10/29— we’re only a FORTNIGHT away from celebrating this amazing community through our love (and sometimes distaste) for soup!

we have a new album’s worth of puns to simmer, tons of amazing recipes to share, and plenty of new community members to welcome into the lore!

🍜🥫🍲🥣