Somewhere in the Double Rainbow: Representations Ofbisexuality In
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Somewhere in the Double Rainbow: Representations ofBisexuality in Selected Post-Apartheid South African Novels by Cheryl Stobie Submitted in fulfilment ofthe requirements for the degree ofDoctor ofPhilosophy in the School ofLiterary Studies, Media, and Creative Arts, Faculty ofHumanities, Development and Social Sciences, Howard College Campus, University ofKwaZulu-Natal. 2005 Declaration I declare that this dissertation is my own work. It has not been submitted before for any degree at any other university. Where use has been made of the scholarship of other authors, they have been duly acknowledged in the text . /~ < .. .. ~ . Cheryl Stobie As the candidate's supervisor I hereby approve the submission of the thesis for examination. ........Ul~ . Professor J. U. Jacobs December 2005 Table ofContents Acknowledgements .. Abstract ................................................................................... iii Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview 1 Chapter 2: Bisexuality: Ontology and Epistemology 33 Chapter 3: Homosexualities in Africa and South Africa 70 Chapter 4: "Biopia" in Biography: The Representation ofBisexuality in Selected South African Lives 104 Chapter 5: Mother, Missus, Mate: Bisexuality in Tatamkhulu Afrika's Mr Chameleon and Bitter Eden 155 Chapter 6: Fissures in Apartheid's "Eden": Representations ofBisexuality in Cracks by Sheila Kohler and The Smell ofApples by Mark Behr 191 Chapter 7: "Who Really Can Follow These Bisexual Variations": Nadine Gordimer's The House Gun 235 Chapter 8: Bisexuality and the Queer Celebratory: K. Sello Duiker 's The Quiet Violence ofDreams, AshrafJamal's Love Themesfor the Wilderness, and Shamim Sarif's The World Unseen 274 Chapter 9: Writing in the Interzone: A Queer Postcolonial Reading of Barbara Adair's In Tangier We Killed the Blue Parrot 322 Chapter 10: Conclusion: Bisexuality in the South African Imaginary 366 Bibliography 378 Acknowledgements My supervisor, Professor Johan Jacobs, has been instrumental in my completing this thesis. I thank him for having spurred my thinking with salient questions, for his expertise and for his editorial acumen. I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Thuthuka Programme ofthe National Research Foundation (NRF), and the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which have provided funding for this project. I am particularly grateful for the opportunity to travel to Manhattan, Kansas, to present a paper at the "Sex and the Body Politic" conference in 2004, and to London to attend the "Queer Matters" conference later that year. I thank Professor Michael Chapman for providing funds from his NRF "Postcolonialism: A South!African Perspective" project for me to travel to the "Urban Generations: Postcolonial Cities" conference in Rabat, Morocco , in 2004, and to Dr David Richards of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University, UK, for inviting me to present a paper at the "Self and Subject: African and Asian Perspectives" conference in Edinburgh in 2005. Family, friends and colleagues have given generous support. Bruce, Connor, Caitlin, Melissa and Blake Stobie have been models of understanding, kindness and encouragement though the process of finishing this work. I would also like to pay tribute to the memory of my parents, Walter Frederick Cheek and Ethel Cheek. I am deeply indebted to Joan Gallagher, Dr Julie Parle and Ann Tothill, and I remember with warm affection friends and colleagues Marie Dyer and Pat Merrett. I am thankful for the friendship and helpful critical comments of the Women's Narrative Group. I appreciate the discussions with and help provided by colleagues and ex-colleagues: Dr Ashraf Jamal, Dr Catherine Woeber, Dr Jill Arnott, Professor Anton van der 11 Hoven, Professor Liz Gunner, Professor David Attwell, Dr Kai Easton, Mike Lambert, Professor Duncan Brown, Professor Jenny Clarence-Fincham, Dr Stefan Helgesson, Dr Andries Visagie, Professor Adrian Koopman, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, Professor Colin Gardner and Bambi Ogram. Assistance has also been provided by Sean Rogers, Karen Bruce and Jean Rossmann. Scholars of bisexuality to whom I am indebted are Dr Clare Hemmings, Dr Jo Eadie, Bobbie Petford, Dr Linda D. Wayne, Dr Paula Pratt and Bemedette Muthien. Authors who were helpful include Barbara Adair, Stephen Gray and Lola Watter. The staff at the National English Literary Museum, especially the director, Dr Malcolm Hacksley, and Cecilia Blight, have been most obliging. To all I extend my heartfelt thanks. 111 Abstract This thesis examines the middle ground between dual strands of sexuality/gender and race/ethnicity, which I refer to metaphorically as a fluid space of possibility between the rainbows of the pride flag, which celebrates sexual diversity, and the image of the rainbow nation, which celebrates multiculturalism. I discuss ways in which lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues and rights have been discursively treated in the West as well as Africa, most particularly South Africa. I note that a substantial number of novels which appeared after 1994 and have a South African setting or were authored by South Africans, employ the trope of bisexuality. This new preoccupation with bisexuality is parallel to attitudes towards change, the future, and progressive politics, including gender politics. Representations of bisexuality in each of the texts I examine vary; however, together they form a crucial cartography ofa liberalization of the imagination in post-apartheid South Africa: a space of anxiety and hope, a space particularly revealing the ongoing evolution of a national identity, and newly part ofa global community. Reading bisexuality accurately contributes to the disruption of binaries and illumination of the interstitial associated with the post-apartheid moment in general, and contemporary South African literature and literary criticism in particular. This method of reading, which I call "biopia," allows for a fresh understanding ofsexuality, gender, race, citizenship and authority. Chapter 1 Introduction and Overview In medieval folklore a person might change sex by passing under a rainbow. Cassell's Encyclopedia ofQueer Myth (1997: 278) [T]he connotation/denotation of the word that's being used now politically by Native Americans is that a rainbow is a way many different kinds of people communicate with each other so there's not a race separatism. It's Native Americans' vision of the red, white, black and yellow communicating and making alliances. [~ ..] Jesse Jackson and company have also borrowed the Native Americans' metaphor ofthe rainbow bridge, but I don't know ifgroups in other countries have used that kind of concept . Native Americans claim they were the keepers of the Earth, the ones who would facilitate this rich multialliance, multibridging [...] I also see lesbian and gay people as exemplars of [...] the rainbow bridge, because we exist in all different cultures. Because we're persecuted we tend to look after each other so that you have more of an interracial mixture among gays than you do among the general population. Gloria Anzaldua (2000: 133-4) Why is there gender? Why do we insist that there 's this? The only thing it comes down to is that it gives roughly half the people the chance to be oppressive to roughly the other half That's the only reason I can see that we keep it in place. There's always an "other" for half the people to oppress. And if it were all fluid, if it were kind ofrainbowy kinds of genders, who could oppress whom? Everybody would be an "other." Kate Bornstein (1990: 49) As the sub-title of this dissertation suggests, the purpose of this study is to analyse a representative selection drawn from a corpus of at least sixteen novels exploring the trope of bisexuality, which appeared, seemingly out of the blue, after South Africa's 1994 political watershed. In this chapter I will be theorizing the subject broadly, and providing a cultural grounding of various concepts. A link will be made between individual narratives and the national narrative against a global backdrop of discussion around issues of sexuality, a concept which is ostensibly private but always subject to economies of power. The metaphoric title of this dissertation, "Somewhere 2 in the Double Rainbow," refers to an imaginary, fluid space of possibility between a primary and secondary rainbow. The primary bow is that of sexuality, particularly bisexuality, and gender, epitomized by the rainbow-coloured Pride flag, celebrating sexual diversity. The secondary bow is the ideal of the rainbow nation, the term used in South Africa to denote racial and ethnic diversity, and equality in the body politic. This usage of"rainbow nation" is associated in this country with Constitutional Court judge Albie Sachs and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, but, as my epigraph from Gloria Anzaldua makes clear, the term can be traced back through Jesse Jackson to Native American usage. It thus has a global, as well as national, significance. This metaphoric, curved, interstitial space is a place where images are refracted, a place which represents liminality, diversity, respect and process. In this space I wish to set into motion a dialectic between queerness, particularly bisexuality, and gender, on the one hand, and race and ethnicity, on the other. Although in this in-between space there are many conceptual overlaps, I will tease out some implications associated with each of my "rainbows," beginning with the one which encompasses queer, bisexuality and gender. Later I will particularize this