Queer Spellings: Magic and Melancholy in Fantasy-Fiction
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QUEER SPELLINGS: MAGIC AND MELANCHOLY IN FANTASY-FICTION Jes Battis B.A., University College of the Fraser Valley, 2001 M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2003 THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Department English O Jes Battis 2007 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY SUMMER 2007 All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL Name: Jes Battis Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Title of Research Project: Queer Spellings: Magic and Melancholy in Fantasy-Fiction Examining Committee: Chair: Dr. Margaret Linley Assistant Professor of English Dr. Peter Dickinson Senior Supervisor Assistant Professor of English Dr. Helen Hok-Sze Leung Supervisor Assistant Professor of Women's Studies Dr. Dana Symons Supervisor Assistant Professor of English Dr. Ann Travers Internal Examiner Assistant Professor of Sociology Dr. Veronica Hollinger External Examiner Professor of Cultural Studies, Trent University Date Approved: SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Declaration of Partial Copyright Licence The author, whose copyright is declared on the title page of this work, has granted to Simon Fraser University the right to lend this thesis, project or extended essay to users of the Simon Fraser University Library, and to make partial or single copies only for such users or in response to a request from the library of any other university, or other educational institution, on its own behalf or for one of its users. The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection (currently available to the public at the "Institutional Repository" link of the SFU Library website <www.lib.sfu.ca> at: <http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/112>) and, without changing the content, to translate the thesis/project or extended essays, if technically possible, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation of the digital work. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author's written permission. Permission for public performance, or limited permission for private scholarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. While licensing SFU to permit the above uses, the author retains copyright in the thesis, project or extended essays, including the right to change the work for subsequent purposes, including editing and publishing the work in whole or in part, and licensing other parties, as the author may desire. The original Partial Copyright Licence attesting to these terms, and signed by this author, may be found in the original bound copy of this work, retained in the Simon Fraser University Archive. Simon Fraser University Library Burnaby, BC, Canada Revised: Summer 2007 ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the connection between magic and melancholia in queer fantasy-fiction, looking broadly at what makes the entire fantasy genre in some fundamental sense "queer." Synthesizing and applying psychoanalytical theories on mourning and melancholia from Sigmund Freud to Judith Butler, I examine how LGBT- identified characters within literary and visual media by Samuel Delany, Mercedes Lackey, Chaz Brenchley, Lynn Flewelling, J.R.R. Tolkien, Joss Whedon, and others, negotiate their subjectivities and erotic lives through the melancholic incorporation and manipulation of supernatural forces. In so doing, I contend that fantasy, as a category of generic production and gender inscription, reveals an extremely provocative connection between queerness, mourning, and the supernatural. Arguing that magic and melancholia emerge from similar spaces of psychoanalytic "lack," I position the linguistic and gestural acts of wizardry and spellcasting-the root of all fantastic formulations and fabulations-as per$ormative acts designed to bridge an impossible gap in signification. Keywords: queer, fantasy, science-fiction, melancholy, magic, witchcraft DEDICATION I dedicate this work to all of my families-biological, chosen, and queer-for all of their support, generosity, and love. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my committee members, for all of your tireless work and support. Thanks in particular to my doctoral supervisor, Peter Dickinson, for encouraging me to take up this project in the first place, and for guiding me every step of the way. A final thanks to all of my friends and peers within the graduate student community at Simon Fraser University-without your support, this would have been impossible. TABLE OF CONTENTS .. Approval ...................................................................................... ..a ... Abstract .......................................................................................... 111 Dedication ....................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements ...........................................................................v Table of Contents .............................................................................vi Introduction ....................................................................................1 Magic = Melancholia Chapter One ...................................................................................49 A Passion For Patterns: Living and Dying in the Queer Markets of Samuel Delany's NevGj;on Chapter Two ...................................................................................97 Dying in the Prayer Closet: Queer Suicide in the Work of Mercedes Lackey Chapter Three ................................................................................133 Queer Break-Ins: Sexuality and Apprenticeship in the Novels of Chaz Brenchley and Lynn Flewelling Chapter Four ................................................................................-172 Gandalf Is Burning: Wizardry and Drag Performance Chapter Five ..................................................................................211 Willow's Pharmacy: Desire and Addiction in Buffi the Vampire Slayer Epilogue .........................................................................................251 Tears For Queers Bibliography ..................................................................................263 Introduction: Magic = Melancholia "The uncanny is queer. And the queer is uncanny. [Their] shared secret history goes back some way." - Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny, 43. "I am here, sitting simply and calmly in the dark interior of love." - Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse, 171. "Sometimes we remember our bedrooms, and our parents' bedrooms, and the bedrooms of our friends." - The Arcade Fire, "Neighborhood #I (Tunnels)," Funeral. What is queer about fantasy precisely, and what is fantastic-ven uncanny- about queerness? As a gay kid, I read fantasy literature to escape the boredom of small-town suburban life. Fantasy was my pornography. I would ditch seventh-grade gym class and sit under a giant willow tree in the park next to my middle-school, reading battered old paperbacks: Mercedes Lackey, Margaret Weiss, Diane Duane, Michael Ende. I hated organized sports with a passion, but I came to love what I now realize were the meticulously, even elegantly organized fantasy realms within those novels. Valdemar, Fantasia, Lankhmar, Nevhrjion. Middle-Earth was my middle-school. I begin with my own autobiography because I think that there's something peculiar, something sad even, about the image of a kid sitting under a willow tree, reading fantasy novels because he hates school. And yet the memory, for me, isn't a sad one, or isn't precisely a sad one, since the sadness is limned with a kind of dark and lovely pleasure. This was the point, I think, where fantasy, melancholy, and queerness- both as an erotic position and as a nonspace of curious exile-became linked for me. It was underneath that willow tree, as the fat drops of rain landed on my copy of Duane's So You Want To Be A Wizard (and I read on, dabbing at the pages), that I also began for the first time to read my own gender as a burning character, an aleph, a secreturn. This project emerged from the desire to explore how fantasy literature might emerge from structures of melancholy, and, in a broader sense, how this relationship might in some way structure queer life.' Although this is a textual analysis rather than any kind of participatory study, which precludes me making any generalizing comments about a larger queer audience, it has always been my personal suspicion that queer readers are attracted to fantasy writing. Even when the characters themselves are not, strictly speaking, homosexual, readers can sympathize with their larger-than-life struggles because being queer often seems larger-than-life. Biddy Martin, in her 1994 article "Extraordinary Homosexuals," locates a "fear of the ordinary" at the heart of queer relations: "Implicit in [some] constructions of queerness, I fear, is the lure of an existence without limit, without bodies or psyches.. .an enormous fear of ordinariness or normalcy [that] results in superficial accounts of the complex imbrication of sexuality with other aspects