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A University of Sussex DPhil thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details ‘Sometimes I fear that the whole world is queer’ What bisexual theories, identities and representations can still offer queer studies JOSEPH ANTHONY RONAN Thesis submitted for the qualification of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN SEXUAL DISSIDENCE IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX December 2014 2 STATEMENT I hereby declare that this thesis has not been, and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. However, the thesis incorporates to the extent indicated below, material already submitted as part of required coursework for MA Sexual Dissidence in Literature and Culture which was awarded by University of Sussex, 2011. Joseph Ronan, December 2014 Parts of pages 32, 33, 38 and 42 of this thesis are adapted from 5 paragraphs in the MA Term Paper: ‘A Label is No Liberation at All’: Queer Fixity and the Process of Bisexuality, submitted 2010. 3 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX JOSEPH RONAN DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN SEXUAL DISSIDENCE IN LITERATURE AND CULTURE ‘SOMETIMES I FEAR THAT THE WHOLE WORLD IS QUEER’: WHAT BISEXUAL THEORIES, IDENTITIES AND REPRESENTATIONS CAN STILL OFFER QUEER STUDIES SUMMARY This thesis examines the marginalization of bisexuality in contemporary British culture and in queer theory, and addresses a division in bisexual theory between identity-based and epistemological approaches. It proposes in response a bisexual reading, here termed ‘re/depositioning’. This interdisciplinary approach gives particular focus to the interrogation of bisexual textuality, rather than (only) to bisexuality as a subject of representation. Part I examines ways in which bisexuality is erased and relationships between bisexuality, queer theory and narrative. It then posits a bisexual critical practice as counter to the end-oriented progress narratives of fixed identity and capitalist production, and to the reduction of queer theory to a fixed oppositional stance. Part I also responds to the ‘temporal turn’ in queer theory – particularly in the work of Lee Edelman, Jose Esteban Muñoz and Elizabeth Freeman – which critiques ‘straight time’. The thesis advances a bisexual temporality distinct from the conflicting utopian and anti-utopian queer approaches to futurity. Part II of the thesis re/depositions a number of contemporary literary and cultural representations of male bisexuality. A chapter on the staging in The Buddha of Suburbia of adolescent sexuality and pop music repurposes damaging bisexual stereotypes; the denigration of bisexuality as ‘adolescent’ gives way, in this analysis, to a productive ‘textual immaturity’. The subsequent chapter reads Morrissey’s cultural performance as an embodied critique of heteronormativity which negotiates incompatibilities between radical theory and lived identity. A chapter on Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child reads that novel as a ‘bisexual camp’ text whose narrative structure and unnamed bisexualities critique the rewriting of bisexuality as gay, queer, or immature. A final chapter presents the thesis’s conclusions: that critical re-engagement with bisexuality strengthens the arguments of queer theory and offers possibilities for living that resist the reductive imperatives of straight time and heteronormative identity narratives whilst remaining liveable within them. 4 CONTENTS SUMMARY........................................................................................................................3 CONTENTS........................................................................................................................4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.....................................................................................................6 INTRODUCTION: Sometimes I fear that the whole world is queer.................................7 PART I: BISEXUAL READING CHAPTER ONE The End of Bisexuality.............................................................................30 1.1. Illegible Back-Door Queers 1.2. Bisexuality and Narrative CHAPTER TWO Bisexuality in a Different Light...............................................................51 2.1. The Present Problem 2.2. Indeterminacy/Uncertainty 2.3. Light 2.4. Complementarity 2.5. Bi-Temporality PART II: BITEXTUALITY CHAPTER THREE Textual Immaturity: The Buddha(s) of Suburbia..................................77 Textually immature re/depositionings of punk futurity, bi-temporality and The Buddha of Suburbia as a bitextual, non-linear network. 5 CHAPTER FOUR ‘That’s How People Grow Up’: Morrissey as Cultural Text.................123 4.1. Erot(et)ics 4.2. Insider-Outsider 4.3. ‘I Can Have Both’ 4.4. Ringleader of the Tormentors ‘You Have Killed Me’ ‘At Last I Am Born’ CHAPTER FIVE A Cock and Balls Story: Bisexual Camp in The Stranger’s Child.............160 5.1. Gay Reading 5.2. Ironic Quivers 5.3. What Are You Insinuating? 5.4. A Gentleman’s Excessive Cigar 5.5. Untimeliness 5.6. Failure and Forgetting 5.7. Discontinuous Quantum Jumps 5.8. Re-writing Cecil CONCLUSIONS: Sometimes, but always in vain..........................................................199 BIBLIOGRAPHY:.............................................................................................................212 AFTERWORD:................................................................................................................223 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In its first year this research was aided by a Sussex School of English bursary, and for the past two has been funded by an AHRC doctoral award and Sussex match-funding. I would like to extend thanks to both the AHRC and the School of English for this generous support, and to the interview panel of Norman Vance, Lindsey Smith and Doug Haynes for seeing promise in this research. Many thanks to my secondary supervisor Vicky Lebeau who, along with Ruth Charnock and Tom Wright in our annual review meetings, provided provoking feedback on draft chapters which have helped me to clarify my thinking in a number of areas. I would like to thank Rachel O’Connell and all in the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence, past and present, for providing a research community of which I am proud to be a part. The queer dialogues I have been part of over the last few years have been enriching and always welcoming. I hope for continued association with the centre and its valuable community. The teaching I received during my undergraduate and MA study at the University of Sussex has been formative and life-changing. A Masters term paper written for William Spurlin contained the kernels of this present work and his passionate encouragement and support was instrumental in its continuation. Particular thanks must go to Alan Sinfield, who opened my eyes. I would not have embarked on this PhD were it not for the efforts of Bill McEvoy, who over the last eight years as tutor, colleague and friend has always encouraged me and pushed me when I needed pushing; my thanks to him for his great generosity. Thanks also to Jo and Mike Ronan, for their significant financial support and personal encouragement without which I could never have considered postgraduate study. They have been a vital safety net, ready and willing to offer help and yet knowing when not to ask ‘how it’s all going’. Thanks are also due to Ellie Williams for innumerable discussions about my work and the university over many years – and in particular for her deft manoeuvring between scholarly critiques, moral support, and bringing me down a peg or two. In recent months Dominic Walker has provided a much needed extra pair of eyes over sections of this work; his attentive comments and feedback are hugely appreciated. Bryin Lindoe, Daniel McEvoy, Teeny Brady, Tom Runciman and Rachel Wemyss have all had to live with this thesis at various points over the last three years and have put up with it (and me), without complaint. My thanks to them all, and also to all those with whom I have shared a workspace for whom I have undoubtedly been too regular a distraction. Tom Houlton, Zac Rowlinson, Mike Rowland and Dominic Walker: you have kept me going. My sincerest thanks are reserved for Vincent Quinn, my doctoral supervisor, whose support has been invaluable. My brief words here cannot do justice to his understanding, encouragement and humour over the last three years, which have enabled me to submit this work in a form of which I am proud. I am so grateful for his availability and willingness always to give time to work (presented so often in a state of disarray), as well as for the extent and quality of his questions and advice. I am a far better writer and thinker for his input and I cannot thank him enough. His ongoing faith in this project allowed me to keep mine. 7 INTRODUCTION Sometimes I fear that the whole world is queer 8 This thesis began with a sense that bisexual theory had reached something of an impasse; that a range of crucial and exciting questions around bisexuality had