ABSTRACT
In the field of feminist theory, Nicole Brossard is the name most commonly associated with the explicit project of constructing a utopic space around the figure of the lesbian. The twelve essays in The Aerial Letter outline a political program for lesbian/feminist emancipation. The agenda of this program assumes the existence of a patriarchy, immensely influential but ultimately finite, that is inimical to women and lesbians. `Brossard's apparently constructionist attention to "the codes, symbols, and practices of dominant culture" and her location of minority resistance at the level of text is motivated by an essentialist positing of femininity or lesbianism. In The Aerial Letter, skin, text, and hologram constitute a triangulation in which each vertex is a figure of, and is figured by, the other two: "Text experienced like a three-dimensional image, instantly available, like a new skin. Brossard's repressed lesbian body is a body excluded from speech and writing, from cultural representation.
