Queerying examples of contemporary South African short fiction. (March 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Murray, Sally Ann
• Other Names: Soldati-Kahimbaara Khulukazi guest-editor.; Fasselt Rebecca guest-editor.; Sandwith Corinne guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: Journal of Commonwealth literature. Volume 55:Number 1(2020)
• Page Start: 77
• Page End: 95
• Publication Date: 2020-03
• Subjects: contemporary -- queer -- querying -- short fiction -- South Africa; English literature -- Periodicals; Commonwealth literature (English) -- Periodicals; Littérature anglaise -- Périodiques; 820.05
• DOI: 10.1177/0021989418788909
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0021-9894

Abstract

With a view to imagining the forms and foci of something that might be persuaded to manifest as post-2000 "queer South African short fiction", I queery the possibilities of queerness as category of analysis. Using a necessarily limited, illustrative selection of stories, I discuss aspects of queer in relation to such issues as generic scope, the erotic, futurity, and queerings of the canon. The approach inclines towards queer as a deliberately blurred lens, hoping to enable not precise sightlines but an obliqueness that, in conjunction with the identifier "South African", brings into view partial glimpses of possibility for queer understandings of local short fiction. This investigation of relationality between queer as sexuality and queer as a more broadly disruptive optic is speculative, and necessarily imprecise. The method is appropriate to thinking queerly about how to disorientate local short stories in their encounters with forms of the normative.