Dissertation
\"THOSE WHO SHATTER THE STONE OF TIME\": QUEER REPETITIONS AND QUESTIONS OF CHRONO- AND HETERONORMATIVITY IN JUNOT DÍAZ AND TONI MORRISON
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2015
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/117931
Abstract
This dissertation is driven by the idea that temporal discourses have historically been used to produce and manage difference by relegating to the margins of society those who are "out of sync" with hegemonic time lines. Specifically, this work looks at how white heteropatriarchy has portrayed racial, ethnic, and queer others as temporally backwards and, therefore, as existing outside the "official" timelines of the nation. This is not to say, however, that these minority subjects have passively accepted this othering; on the contrary, they have developed resistant temporalities to counteract the effects of what Freeman calls "chrononormativity." Rather than attempting to analyze the temporalities of people of color and queers separately, this work takes an intersectional approach that views sex and race as inseparable, particularly when attempting to address the temporalities of diasporic peoples. Through an analysis of the times in Junot Díaz's and Toni Morrison's fiction, this dissertation shows that, by virtue of its liminality, diasporic time offers an alternative to the compulsive repetition that structures heteronormativity and national belonging. Drawing on theories from Butler and Deleuze, I contend that what I call "repetition with a difference" does not simply naturalize laws but rather disrupts them by exposing the difference embedded in any repetition.
To better reveal how this alternative temporality disrupts racial and sexual essentialisms, I approach it from three different perspectives. Chapter 2 addresses the connection between imperial languages and the making of the colonial difference--the marginalization of non-Western languages on account of their perceived primitivism--and argues that by imbuing the Englishes in their works with a certain difference, Díaz and Morrison produce distinctly queer languages that do not reinscribe the same patterns of colonialism, racism, and sexism as hegemonic ones do. Chapter 3 presents the male figures in both authors' works as examples of imperfect citations of hegemonic masculinities that challenge, but do not necessarily transgress, heteropatriarchal notions of maleness. Finally, Chapter 4 attempts to offer a conceptualization of the future as defined neither by linear progress nor by repronormativity but rather by a distinctly horizontal, ecstatic, and erotic temporality.
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Details
- Title
- \"THOSE WHO SHATTER THE STONE OF TIME\": QUEER REPETITIONS AND QUESTIONS OF CHRONO- AND HETERONORMATIVITY IN JUNOT DÍAZ AND TONI MORRISON
- Creators
- Daniela Miranda
- Contributors
- T.V. Reed (Advisor)Susan Ross (Committee Member)Carol Siegel (Committee Member)John Streamas (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 210
- Identifiers
- 99900581839601842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation