Bitchy Fags and Borderline Queers: The Tension Between Subjective Homonormativity and Queerness in William S. Burroughs' "Queer" (original) (raw)

The homosexual male has long been represented as other, whether as the medicalised or sexually deviant other, however, neoliberalism aims to recuperate the figure of the homosexual into the normative social order, no longer ‘other’, now eager consumer and productive member of society. This thesis investigates how the tension between homonormativity and queerness is represented in William S. Burroughs’ novel Queer, in order to elucidate how homosexual characters are constructed in literature produced under neoliberalism. Queer theory will be applied to a close analysis of the text in order to explore how homosexual subjectivity is constructed through representation. Texts are products of specific cultural moments, and as such it is important to understand the ways in which neoliberalism, which is the dominant logic of the current time, has influenced representations of homosexuality in the novel Queer. This thesis will look at Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics in order to explain the production of homosexual bodies and subjectivities, which in turn will account for how the split between homonormativity, the depoliticised homosexual body which desires to assimilate with the social order, and queerness comes to be. It is argued that, despite Burroughs’ reputation for being a subversive writer, Queer contains homonormative representations of homosexual people who desire acceptance into the hegemonic social order. In reading Queer as a site of stress in subjective becoming, this research provides a theoretical base for analysing other queer texts and their representations.