Instead, I suggest that leaves represent the necessary cyclicality of feminist history, or what historian Joan Scott has called the “fantasy echo” of feminist history. We speak of feminism as having waves, but why not seasons, spells of time that flow into each other unpredictably? Consider, for example, Hammond’s Small Erasures, in which letters from artists declining permission to use their work in Hammond’s landmark book Lesbian Art in America become memento mori, encased in amber. Small Erasures brings the continuing difficulties of lesbian feminism to mind, even as we might consider that tension to be long behind us. Or we might see Untitled (1995) with its beautifully vulvic slit as being evocative of a moment when feminist core imagery was key to changing the conversation around the apolitical masculinity of Minimalism.
This is not to say that any version of feminism is outdated — quite the opposite. What I mean to suggest is that feminism, especially queer feminism, carries with it remnants of everything that has come before, like the hot and humid days that might crop up in the crisp fall. Queer feminism is a cumulative effort that constantly returns to itself, touches itself, articulates itself.
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