Sexuality, race and empire in Alan Hollinghurst's "A Thieving Boy" (1983)

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2179060
AutoresEd Dodson
Año2016
Volumen52
Número6
Páginas700-712
Fecha de publicación2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17449855.2016.1209849
OpenAlexW2509583613
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas17

By returning to the very start of Alan Hollinghurst’s literary career, this article begins constructing a different narrative about this “gay” British author – one in which sexuality, race and empire are intimately connected, and in which sexual liberation is haunted by imperial histories of racial exploitation. Through a “contrapuntal” analysis of his 1983 Egyptian short story “A Thieving Boy”, the article complicates dominant “queer” interpretations which overlook the postimperial politics – the aesthetic negotiation of Britain after empire – at stake in his representations of race and nation. In particular, through a dialogue with Hollinghurst’s non-fiction, it interrogates the political ambiguity of the story’s postimperial rewriting of E.M. Forster’s (homo)sexual awakening. It concludes by exploring the implications of this rereading for conventional conceptions of “postcolonial” and “British” contemporary fiction

Ambiguity · Ancient history · Art · British Empire · Empire · Human sexuality · Literature · Narrative · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Queer · Race (biology · Social science · Sociology · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy