© 2014 Octavio R. Gonzalez ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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© 2014 Octavio R. Gonzalez ALL RIGHTS RESERVED MISFIT MINORITIES: RESISTING UPLIFT IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTION By OCTAVIO RAFAEL GONZALEZ A dissertation submitted to the Graduate School–New Brunswick Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in English Written under the direction of Marianne DeKoven and Rebecca L. Walkowitz And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey October 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Misfit Minorities: Resisting Uplift in Twentieth-Century Fiction By OCTAVIO R. GONZALEZ Dissertation Co-Directors: Rebecca L. Walkowitz and Marianne DeKoven My dissertation develops the concept of the misfit minority, a literary sensibility emergent in the twentieth century, which enacts an ethos of resistance to collective uplift, bourgeois respectability, and liberal personhood. This sensibility is shaped by the experience of double exile: from majority culture and cultural identity. Such misfit outlooks represent a continuing yet under-acknowledged and under-theorized challenge to late-modern identity movements and liberal society. “Misfit Minorities” is devoted to making visible the diversity of political and ethical claims made by minoritized authors of modernist and postmodern literary fiction, and to rethinking the normal ranges of agency and political norms within a context of resistance to these norms. My interest in advocating for the literary-cultural narratives of misfit minorities is in service to a “queer” or non- normative vision of collectivity that allows for the ugly feelings, and the figures for such feelings, that are disowned by modern minoritarian norms of uplift and noble resistance to majority culture, rather than complicity with it. Misfit minorities are haunted by the false universals of social privilege: they remind us of those who remain in the shadows, whose tongues remain tied, which is why we should look for them, listen to them, and understand them. ! ii ! Acknowledgments This dissertation has been developing for many years, and in many guises. I could not have accomplished so much of this work without the support of so many friends, colleagues, and family. At Rutgers University, Carlos Decena, Nimanthi Rajasingham, Philip Longo, Tyler Bradway, and Joshua Gang were crucial intellectual interrogators and readers of my work. I owe them a great debt for the intellectual and emotional support they gave me. Josh and Phil in particular helped me in the thornier, early stages of the project. I wish to thank the many people who participated in the Modernist Studies Group, the Twentieth & Twenty-First Century Group, the Postcolonial Studies Group, and the Queer Research Group for their support and their productive sessions over the years. Other scholarly friends and colleagues were important in numerous capacities over the years. I thank Debapriya Sarkar, Mark DiGiacomo, Manuel Betancourt, and too many others to list have been part of the wonderful family of support in the Graduate English program. I also want to thank Sue Hodson, Curator at The Huntington Library, for allowing me to use some of the archival material in the Christopher Isherwood Papers. Drawing on that archive, a version of Chapter 3 appeared in Winter 2013 of MFS: Modern Fiction Studies. Within Rutgers University, Harriet Davidson, Elin Diamond, Richard Dienst, Nicholas Gaskill, Andrew Goldstone, Ann Jurecic, Michelle Stephens, Margaret Ronda, Stéphane Robolin, Cheryl Wall, and Allan Isaac have made a big difference in my success as a graduate student and nascent literary scholar. They have read my work, listened to my ideas, and given me generous feedback time and time again. I also want to thank Evie Shockley for her wonderful and practical support and for her example as a double threat: an accomplished poet and literary critic of the highest magnitude. Cheryl Robinson and Courtney Borack have been such a source of support, I want to acknowledge how much they mean to me and to our program. And I want to thank, again, ! iii ! Allan Isaac and Carlos Decena, especially, for showing me that it is possible to make it through tenure and survive—and thrive!— as a queer man of color. In my academic career, I have benefited from nurturing relationships with friends and teachers almost too numerous to mention. I want to thank the Mellon Mays Fellowship Program for their unstinting support over the years, as well as the faculty and administrators at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania State University, Rutgers University Graduate School, the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their support throughout my studies. At Pennsylvania State University, I want to thank Robert Caserio, Jeffrey Nealon, Michael Bérubé, Jane Juffer, and especially Janet Lyon, for their support in the early years of my graduate training. Rachel Teukolsky was also an amazing mentor to me. My friends and colleagues from my Penn State days include Pia Deas, Amy Clukey, and Liz Kuhn of the Modernist Studies Group. I also especially want to thank David Kurnick and John Kucich for the many years of patient guidance and direction they have given me. They have read numerous drafts of my work, debated ideas with me, disagreed with me, and written numerous letters of recommendation for me. I also want to thank Heather Love, for being such a generous mentor and figure of inspiration, as the project developed. Most importantly, I want to thank Rebecca Walkowitz and Marianne DeKoven for their incredible insight and collective wisdom. They helped me place my work in relation to important conversations, and most importantly sharpened my capacities to analyze literature and culture in the modern and contemporary eras. Their unstinting generosity toward me helped me develop many of my literary critical skills. Before graduate school, I was a member of the Gay Poets gathering, where I met such wonderfully supportive and inspiring poets as Rigoberto González, Michael Broder, Steven Cordova, Ron Drummond, David Groff, Scott Hightower, Dean Kostos, and Jason Schneiderman. ! iv ! I also want to thank Michael Broder, Deborah Landau, María Melendez, and, last but not least, Francisco Aragón. They have all helped me find and extend my voice as a poet. As an undergraduate, I was lucky to have an incredible role model in Patricia White, who remains an inspiration. Thank you, Patty. I also shared many espressos with the late George Moskos, who remains always in my memory. He, too, showed me it was possible to be a successful, and proud, queer academic. Chuck James, Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot Professor Emeritus at Swarthmore, was a dear mentor to me over the years, as were Hugh Lacey and Philip Weinstein. As an ugly duckling in high school—a misfit, indeed—I found my circle of friends under the auspices of the Patterns literary magazine. Sharon Lustbader, who read Ed White’s A Boy’s Own Story, after I told her it meant a lot to me. You have been an incredible resource for me over the years, showing me what it means to be a teacher, especially outside the classroom. Lynda, you came up to me in our freshman year English class, and asked if I wanted to share writing with you. We have been sharing such moments, and our writing, ever since. As for this, as for so much more (too much more—but what else do best friends in high school ask of us?) I thank you. I want to thank my partner and companion, Brian P. Fuss, who has been at my side over the last few years, and now travels with me to the next stage of my academic life. He has shown me how to love someone in ways that are by turns sincere, funny, and ongoing. He provides me with a sentimental education that I cherish, and that I wish on everyone to experience. Self-loving begins at home, which is one moral of the story of Misfit Minorities. Speaking of home, members of my family, nuclear and extended, have been there for me when nobody else could—the definition of family. They’ve been there since before my first words in English: “Silence everybody here!” (It is both funny and cringe worthy that the first words I uttered in my adopted tongue commanded that everyone else be quiet.) Members of my extended family, over the years, include Dawn Heather Bossman, Alvin J. Fung, and Mark Trushkowsky. ! v ! My beloved sister and brother, Ismenia and Jackson, have taught me more than they know. My father, Julián, and my mother, Eva, have loved me more than I can ever know. I know at least that much. And I want to thank Santiago, my adopted father, and Rosy, former counselor and adopted mother. They’ve shown me, in different ways, the possibility of redemption. Finally, I want to thank writing—in any language—for providing me not only a means to escape the mundane, but also providing a means to fight back, to change social reality for the better. ! vi ! Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgments iii–vi Table of Contents vii Introduction: Haunting Fictions of Belonging: The Double Exile of the Misfit Minority 1–45 Chapter 1: Wallowing With “Wallie”: Wallace Thurman’s Pyrrhic Victory 46–113 Chapter 2: This Myth Which Is Not One: The Legend of Jean Rhys and the Fiction of “Inferior Being” 114–196 Chapter 3: Isherwood’s Impersonality: Ascetic Self-Divestiture and Queer Relationality In A Single Man 197–236 Chapter 4: Ishiguro’s Imaginary Geographies: Spatial Grammar and the Political Allegory of Never Let Me Go 237–286 Bibliography 287–299 !vii ! 1 INTRODUCTION Haunting Fictions of Belonging: The Double Exile of the Misfit Minority You can only read against the grain if misfits in the text signal the way.