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Representations of Gender and Sexuality in the Key Characters of Lauren Beukes’S Interstitial Fiction

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Representations of Gender and Sexuality in the Key Characters of Lauren Beukes’S Interstitial Fiction Representations of Gender and Sexuality in the Key Characters of Lauren Beukes’s Interstitial Fiction Robyn Wilkinson 208502509 Pietermaritzburg 2015 Declaration Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters, in the Graduate Programme in English Studies, Humanities, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. I, Robyn Wilkinson, declare that 1. The research reported in this dissertation, except where otherwise indicated, is my original research. 2. This dissertation has not been submitted for any degree or examination at any other university. 3. This dissertation does not contain other persons’ data, pictures, graphs or other information, unless specifically acknowledged as being sourced from other persons. 4. This dissertation does not contain other persons’ writing, unless specifically acknowledged as being sourced from other researchers. Where other written sources have been quoted, then: a. Their words have been re-written but the general information attributed to them has been referenced. b. Where their exact words have been used, then their writing has been placed inside quotation marks, and referenced. 5. This dissertation does not contain text, graphics or tables copied and pasted from the Internet, unless specifically acknowledged, and the source being detailed in the dissertation and in the References sections. _________________________________________ Student Name _______________ _______________ Signature Date _________________________________________ Name of Supervisor _______________ _______________ Signature Date Acknowledgements The financial assistance of the National Research Foundation (NRF) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the NRF. I would also like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Cheryl Stobie, for all her support and guidance, and my parents for the opportunity to further my studies. Abstract In the past seven years South African author Lauren Beukes has published four highly successful novels: Moxyland (2008), Zoo City (2010), The Shining Girls (2013), and Broken Monsters (2014). Beukes’s novels have garnered much attention both locally and overseas, with critics frequently praising the social awareness of her writing and noting her unique use of genre. Beukes employs a number of techniques to render the settings of her novels realistic and recognisable to a contemporary reader; however, disrupting the familiarity of the world in each case is an unexpected speculative twist. The supernatural elements of the texts become vehicles for the exploration of a number of topical social issues, offering fresh perspectives on these issues, and encouraging reader engagement with them. This dissertation focuses specifically on the presentation of contemporary gender issues in the novels, using textual analysis in order to consider how Beukes’s manipulation of genre tropes affects a reading of gender and sexuality in the key characters of her texts, and relating this to various contemporary gender theories. What emerges is a thorough demonstration of the socially constructed and multifaceted nature of gender and sexuality, together with insightful commentary on the complexities of enacting masculinities and femininities in a modern world influenced by rapid technological advancement and associated social developments. Through her narratives Beukes challenges the patriarchal ideologies which remain a significant feature of both South African and American social landscapes, advocating in their place a postfeminist egalitarianism. Contents Chapter One Introduction ............................................................................................................................................ 1 Chapter Two “Computer cowboys” and “ass-kicking techno-babes”: challenging cyberpunk’s conventional representations of gender and sexuality in the futuristic digital world of Moxyland .......................... 32 Chapter Three Representations of gender and sexuality at the intersection of Western and African cultures in Zoo City ........................................................................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. Chapter Four Sexualised serial murder and the persistence of patriarchy in The Shining Girls ................................. 73 Chapter Five Hybrid bodies and porous borders: the multifaceted nature of contemporary gender and sexuality in Broken Monsters ................................................................................................................................... 94 Chapter Six Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................... 115 References .......................................................................................................................................... 123 Chapter One Introduction In the past seven years South African author Lauren Beukes has published four highly successful novels that have garnered much attention both locally and overseas, and have been accorded a number of literary awards. Her debut novel, Moxyland, was published in 2008, followed by Zoo City in 2010, which won the highly prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2011. Beukes’s third novel, The Shining Girls, was published in 2013 and was awarded the August Derleth prize for Best Horror, the Strand Critics Choice Award for Best Mystery and the esteemed University of Johannesburg Prize. Her latest novel, Broken Monsters, was released in 2014, and was shortlisted for the 2015 University of Johannesburg Prize. Although the novels are not connected narratively, and operate as individual stories rather than as a series, a much-noted common feature of these works is Beukes’s unique writing style and use of genre. Beukes blends together a number of speculative elements with other genre tropes, as well as imbuing her writing with pop culture references and a creative use of language to create hybrid texts that are appealing and accessible to a younger, technology-savvy contemporary readership. Beukes’s writing is also striking in its social awareness, and she provides a point of entry for her readers to engage with this aspect of her novels through her use of speculative fiction and magical realism, integrating magical elements seamlessly into otherwise realistic settings in order to address relevant social issues in an engaging and exciting way. Some of these issues are context- specific, but many are applicable to both her South African and American settings. This dissertation focuses specifically on the novels’ portrayal of gender and sexuality in contemporary society, and the way in which the texts articulate some of the issues surrounding these themes at present. Using textual analysis, this dissertation aims to use a genre theory framework to support a classification of Beukes’s texts as “interstitial fiction” (Moulthrop 1999) or “span fiction” (Brigg 2000), in order to explore the effects of her eclectic manipulation and amalgamation of genre in the novels. A consideration of the genre categories that she draws on, including speculative fiction and its subgenres of science fiction and fantasy, as well as crime fiction and noir, will be undertaken in order to investigate how gender and sexuality are conventionally represented in these genres, and how Beukes’s characters are positioned in relation to these conventions. Given the present and future settings of the novels, together with the wide range of characters that Beukes presents in her texts in terms of gender, age, race, class and sexual orientation, contemporary gender theories will also be used in order to analyse the representations of gender and sexuality offered in the key characters of the novels. This will predominantly involve references to the theories and arguments that have arisen 1 out of third wave feminism and its emphasis on social constructionism, and its associated valorisation of difference, hybridity and multiplicity. This chapter will provide an outline of relevant scholarly work that has been undertaken with regard to Beukes’s novels, with a particular focus on work that has considered her writing style, her use of genre and the way in which gender and sexuality have been represented in her novels. The topic of this dissertation will then be positioned in light of this previous work, emphasising how it aims to further the research that has already been undertaken in this area. A discussion of the theoretical framework that will be used in the analyses of the novels that will follow in the next four chapters will then be undertaken. This will involve a consideration of genre theory in relation to the concepts of interstitial fiction, span fiction and speculative fiction, as well as some of the key arguments of relevant contemporary gender theories that will be used to complement an exploration of the representations of gender and sexuality in Beukes’s novels. Although both Moxyland and Zoo City have garnered much academic attention, relatively little scholarly work has been published on The Shining Girls or Broken Monsters to date. Previous analyses of Beukes’s work discuss the difficulty of classifying her novels in terms of genre, her merging of the fantastic and realist modes, the notable incorporation of popular culture into her writing style, and the contemporary, urban settings of her narratives. A
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