Visibility and Illegality
It is when I visited the website of the Ashmolean museum that I encountered this banknote with words ‘Lesbian Money’ stamped on it. At the time, many gay press has contended that gay rights could be advanced by making the cooperations and society realise how gay and lesbians’ spending are central support of the economics. Printed in the colour of purple, the colour broadly associated with 20th century women’s liberation movements, the terms ‘lesbian money’ clearly personify the banknote as a token of the usually marginalised lesbian communities, transforming it from a channel of alienation to an actor of the pride campaign.
Anna Tsing defines gifts as objects of exchange ‘in which parts of the giver are embedded, extending social relations beyond the transaction’ (Tsing 2013: 23). In this case, money regains its values in social relations, having ‘its name, a personality and a past’ (Mauss [1950] 2002: 30). While the overarching economic theory, the power of the state and bank as well as the heterosexual authority they represented—the power that marginalise and disempower the lesbian communities—have been materialised in a standard banknote, the stamp resists this materialisation. If we regard the spatial-temporal aspect of transaction and circulation, we could see both the banknote and the process of consumption as space to be claimed, just like street being a civil space for protesters to claim and be heard.
The identity and the history of lesbian community is made visible, however, through the illegality of the banknotes due to the legibility of its name. The circulation of these banknote are further hindered by the illegality. As Marcus Banks has recalled, handing the notes over to someone for exchange is an enthusiastic and self-conscious act of claiming an identity, a position and a desire of being seen. Nevertheless, never has any stamped note being received in change. Banks believes that the campaign of stamping on the banknote quickly withered away because no proper circulation and exchange of the notes have occurred. Yet, I think it is the fact that the money cannot be properly circulated that reflects and symbolises how the societies relies on the community and consumption of homosexuals, on the one hand, and oppresses the community’s living space, on the other hand.
Contributed by BichenXu on 02/02/2023
