Queer Family Romance: Writing the “New” South Africa in the 1990s
Queer Family Romance: Writing the “New” South Africa in the 1990s
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酷儿家庭浪漫史：书写 20 世纪 90 年代的“新”南非
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发表时间：
2009
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通讯作者：
Brenna M. Munro
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作者：
Brenna M. Munro
这篇文章考察了同性恋权利的概念在产生后种族隔离时代的“彩虹之国”及其新自由主义经济秩序的新想象中所扮演的经常被忽视的角色。我认为，同性恋者的形象成为了政治变革的化身，象征性地调解了南非新兴公共文化中多种族现代性的冲突，并分析了纳丁·戈迪默和J·M·库切的小说中同性恋“次要人物”所做的工作。《无人陪伴我》(1994)、《家庭之枪》(1998)和《耻辱》(1999)都讲述了白人中产阶级盎格鲁-南非人的故事，他们努力适应新时代，包括应对孩子不是直男的事实。这些小说戏剧化地讲述了种族隔离后，这个国家作为一个种族、异性恋的家庭浪漫故事是如何陷入危机的，并以奇怪的新结构重建了他们的家庭--这引发了人们对生育比喻的灵活性和持久性的质疑。这些文本询问白人如何“站出来”成为国家的臣民，并指出，如果不关注系统性的经济不公正，单凭性行为不能成为重塑种族和国家的理由。
This essay examines the often overlooked role that the idea of gay rights played in producing the new imaginary of the postapartheid “rainbow nation”—and its neoliberal economic order. I suggest that the figure of the gay person became an embodiment of political change, symbolically mediating conflicts within multiracial modernity in South Africa’s emergent public culture, and I analyze the work done by queer “minor characters” in novels by Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee. None to Accompany Me (1994), The House Gun (1998), and Disgrace (1999) all tell the story of white, middle-class Anglo–South Africans whose struggle to adjust to the new era includes dealing with the revelation that their children are not straight. These novels dramatize how the narrative of the nation as a raced, heterosexual family romance was in crisis after apartheid, and reconstitute their families in queer new configurations—raising questions about the flexibility and persistence of the trope of reproductivity. These texts ask how whites are to “come out” as national subjects and indicate that sexuality alone cannot be the grounds for reinventing race and nation without an attention to systemic economic injustice.