Degree
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
English and Literature
Document Type
Dissertation
Abstract
Homosextualities: Translating the Postcolonial Gay Male Body in Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction examines the intersections between queer and postcolonial theories/literatures. Through analysis of short stories, novels, and art from different postcolonial regions, I trace how the postcolonial gay male body sexualizes single national imaginaries through a rhetorical discourse I call “homosextualities.” Chapter 1, “Lingual Dic(k)tations: Alternative Postcolonial Body Languages,” examines how gay male bodies in postcolonial fiction construct an alternative erotic and gay national language of the body in Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House (US/India 2016), Saleem Haddad’s Guapa (Middle East 2016), and Thomas Glave’s short story “Out There” from The Torturer’s Wife (Jamaica/UK/US 2008). Chapter 2 “Anal Allegories: Behind the (W)hole Story” compares and contrast representations of the anus in Thomas Glave’s “Blue Globes,” (Jamaica, UK, US 2008), Reinaldo Arenas’ The Color of Summer (Cuba 1982), K. Sello Duiker’s The Quiet Violence of Dreams (South Africa 2001), and Manil Suri’s The City of Devi (India 2003). I argue that the postcolonial gay male body uses the anus as a literary space of communion, pleasure, sexual enunciation, and national futurity. Finally, in Chapter 3 “Postcolonial Drag: Visualizing Other Drag Alternatives,” I examine representations of gay Muslim males performing what I call “postcolonial drag.” Through examination of Diriye Osman’s “The Other (Wo)man” from Fairy Tales for Lost Children (Somalia 2013) and Hasan Namir’s God In Pink (Canada/Iraq 2015), I explore how Gay Muslim Males use postcolonial drag to challenge contemporary forms of orientalist homophobia to create visibility, knowledge, and communal representations of their individual bodies and sexualities.
Date
2-5-2021
Recommended Citation
Weaver, Sean Alan, "Homosextualities: Translating the Gay Male Body in Contemporary Postcolonial Fiction" (2021). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 5463.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/5463
Committee Chair
Rastogi, Pallavi
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_dissertations.5463
Included in
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons