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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | Somewhere in the double rainbow: queering the nation in recent South African fiction |
Author: | Stobie, Cheryl |
Year: | 2003 |
Periodical: | Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa |
Volume: | 15 |
Issue: | 2 |
Pages: | 117-137 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | homosexuality literature |
About persons: | Shamim Sarif Kabelo Sello Duiker (1974-2005) Sheila Kohler |
Abstract: | The title of this article refers to the imaginary, fluid space of possibility between a primary and secondary rainbow. The primary bow is that of sexuality and gender, epitomized by the rainbow-coloured Pride flag, celebrating sexual diversity. The secondary bow is the ideal of the 'rainbow nation', the term used in South Africa to denote racial and ethnic equality. In this metaphoric space the author sets into motion a dialectic between queerness - especially bisexuality - and gender, on the one hand, and race and ethnicity, on the other. This theoretical framework is used to analyse aspects of three novels set in South Africa. The first is 'Cracks', by Sheila Kohler, published in 1999. The second is Shamim Sarif's 'The world unseen', published in 2001, and the third is 'The quiet violence of dreams', by Sello Duiker, published in the same year. Queerness is a major trope in all three novels, but used to strikingly different effect. In each novel bisexuality is a crucial element of the text, but the function varies in each case. Race and ethnicity also feature very differently in all three novels, but seen together they can provide some useful conclusions about contemporary novelistic depictions of sexuality/gender and race/ethnicity. Bibliogr., sum. [ASC Leiden abstract] |