Cavafy on the road: the fabric of a myth in progress and queer history in the present

我的博士项目临时命名为“Cavafy在路上：一个正在发展的神话的结构和当下的酷儿历史”，我的项目考虑了大约从1963年到2013年的文本和艺术作品，这些文本和艺术作品与c.p. Cavafy（1863-1933）的诗歌和作家形象直接对话。Cavafy和他的作品有时被同性恋恐惧症和民族主义的话语所调解，同时被酷儿亚文化称为身份表达的平台。因此，我的项目调查Cavafy的“成为神话”，作为不同代理人之间不断竞争的基础。因此，我的研究开始在新酷儿史学的框架内重新语境化卡瓦菲尼神话，作为酷儿压迫的叙述，同时也是酷儿自信的叙述，并强调其对酷儿政治的可能贡献。卡瓦菲斯是希腊民族诗人之一，现代希腊研究制度的奠基石之一，也是世界文学的权威作家。Foteini Dimirouli的研究揭示了Cavafy符号资本积累的文化机制。然而，最近的文学对这个成名的成功故事提出了质疑。更确切地说，我的项目主要受Benjamin Kahan和James Faubion的作品影响。通过强调Cavafy在性世界体系半边缘的有限地位，以及在亚历山大的“被殖民的精英”中，他们指出了一个同性恋小文学作家如何设法将自己强加于文化领域，推动抵制总体分类的性模式，但也清晰地表达了预言诗歌，为未来的生活提供了行动模板。我的研究同样受到了Dimitris Papanikolaou的启发，他研究了Cavafy的性诗学，以及它们作为准备酷儿未来的伦理工具的作用，还有Maria Boletsi，她强调讽刺和情感的重叠。在这种情况下，我认为卡瓦菲尼神话的外围，奇怪的线索能够分散围绕卡瓦菲尼的标准化叙事。通过关注酷儿情感的传播和循环，我的项目的创新之处在于Cavafy的“成为神话”的概念，而不是作为酷儿历史过程的简单寓言，而是积极地参与其中。因此，我的方法借鉴了“感觉向后”（Heather Love）、“酷儿未来”（J. E. Muñoz）、“酷儿再生”（Jin Haritaworn）和“酷儿失败”（Judith Halberstam）的理论模型，从而探索酷儿亚文化是如何通过Cavafy引发的认同和设想的情感操作来创造、团结和抵抗的。我所提出的“卡瓦菲亚神话论”，与否定卡瓦菲亚的酷儿观点和影响的解释传统相反，从根茎上加以解释，从酷儿的角度重新审视，可能会导致根本性的范式转变，并为酷儿、情感和神话理论的关键概念提供一个典型的案例研究。因此，我的项目解决了以下问题：我们称之为卡瓦菲斯的现象是如何成为卡瓦菲斯诗歌观众内外酷儿情感的渠道的？酷儿神话作者对Cavafy的情感结构的倾向是如何创造创伤和转型修复的社区的？这种对“Cavafy影响”的集体反应如何将酷儿（间）文本性重新定位为一个参与性项目，以弥补过去失败的酷儿社交能力？卡瓦菲斯的酷儿死后生活如何对抗民族主义和恐同议程？神话的内容和生产能否以酷儿情感的泛滥和传播为前提？它是如何参与酷儿政治对主流话语的反击/写作的？

Provisionally entitled 'Cavafy on the road: the fabric of a myth in progress and queer history in the present', my DPhil project considers texts and artworks, ranging roughly from 1963 to 2013, that are in direct conversation with the poetry and authorial persona of C. P. Cavafy (1863-1933). Cavafy and his body of work have at times been mediated by discourses of homophobia and nationalism, while being claimed by queer subcultures as a platform for identity expression. Consequently, my project investigates Cavafy's 'becoming myth' as the ground for an incessant competition between diverse agents. My research sets out, therefore, to recontextualise the Cavafian mythopoesis within the framework of new queer historiography, as a narrative of queer oppression but also queer assertiveness, and to underscore its possible contribution to queer politics.Cavafy is one of Greece's national poets, one of the cornerstones of the institutional establishment of Modern Greek Studies, and a canonical author of world literature. Foteini Dimirouli's research has cast light on the cultural mechanisms that set in motion the accumulation of Cavafy's symbolic capital. However, recent literature problematises this success story of rise to fame. More precisely, my project is mainly informed by the works of Benjamin Kahan, and James Faubion. By highlighting Cavafy's liminal position in a semi-periphery of the sexual world system, and in Alexandria's 'colonised elite', they pinpoint the ways in which a homosexual writer of minor literature manages to impose himself in the cultural field, propel models of sexuality that resist totalising categorisations, but also articulate a proleptic poetry, offering templates of action for the lives yet to come. My research is equally inspired by Dimitris Papanikolaou who investigated Cavafy's poetics of sexuality as well as their role as an ethical instrument preparing queer futurities, and Maria Boletsi, who stressed the overlap of irony and affect. In this vein, I consider the peripheral, queer strand of Cavafian mythopoesis as capable of decentralising the standardised narrative surrounding Cavafy. By focusing on the transmission and circulation of queer affect, my project's innovative character lies in the conception of Cavafy's 'becoming myth' not as a simple allegory of the processes of queer history, but as actively implicated in it. Thus, my approach draws on the theoretical models of 'feeling backward' (Heather Love), 'queer futurity' (J. E. Muñoz), 'queer regeneration' (Jin Haritaworn), and 'queer failure' (Judith Halberstam), so as to explore how queer subcultures create, unite, and resist thanks to affective operations of identification and envisioning triggered by Cavafy. Opposing an interpretative tradition that has disavowed and hunted down Cavafy's queer aspects, and impact, the Cavafian mythopoesis that I propose, construed as rhizomatic, and revisited from a queer optic, may result in a radical paradigm shift, and offer an exemplary case study for key concepts in queer, affect, and myth theory.Therefore, my project addresses the following questions: how has the phenomenon that we call Cavafy become the conduit for queer affect within and beyond the audiences of Cavafy's poetry? How does the queer mythographers' propensity for Cavafy's affective structures create communities of trauma and transformational reparation? How does this collective response to the 'Cavafy affects' reposition queer (inter)textuality as a participatory project compensating for the past's failed queer sociability? How do Cavafy's queer afterlives counter nationalist and homophobic agendas? Can the content and production of myth be premised on the overflowing, and the dissemination of queer affect? How does it partake in queer politics' fighting/writing back at dominant discourses?