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Queering the South: The Plantation as Homotopia

Queering the South: The Plantation as Homotopia Queering the South: The Plantation as Homotopia By Brandon Gordon Cotton's Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936 ­ 1968. By Michael Bibler. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2009. xiv + 298 pp. $55.00 cloth; $22.50 paper. In Cotton's Queer Relations, Michael Bibler adds to an emergent field of scholarship that seeks to uncover both the presence and significance of same-sex desire in southern literature. Bibler offers illuminating and suggestive readings on a range of mid-twentieth century plantation narratives, arguing that same-sex relationships are both a constant, if previously unacknowledged, feature of the southern plantation and a potentially powerful threat to the same. Bibler focuses on three configurations of same-sex coupling -- between white men, between white and black women, and between black men -- and he frames the project by foregrounding the transgressive potential these same-sex couplings can have in a plantation context. Drawing on queer theorist Leo Bersani's notion of "homo-ness," which maintains that gay couples' sexual sameness has the potential to equalize other forms of social difference, Bibler argues that instances of same-sex intimacy in plantation narratives provide models of egalitarian social relations that challenge the hierarchical, heteronormative power structure http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Southern Literary Journal University of North Carolina Press

Queering the South: The Plantation as Homotopia

Gordon, Brandon.
The Southern Literary Journal , Volume 44 (1) – Feb 17, 2011
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 the Southern Literary Journal and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of English .
ISSN
1534-1461
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Abstract

Queering the South: The Plantation as Homotopia By Brandon Gordon Cotton's Queer Relations: Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the Southern Plantation, 1936 ­ 1968. By Michael Bibler. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 2009. xiv + 298 pp. $55.00 cloth; $22.50 paper. In Cotton's Queer Relations, Michael Bibler adds to an emergent field of scholarship that seeks to uncover both the presence and significance of same-sex desire in southern literature. Bibler offers illuminating and suggestive readings on a range of mid-twentieth century plantation narratives, arguing that same-sex relationships are both a constant, if previously unacknowledged, feature of the southern plantation and a potentially powerful threat to the same. Bibler focuses on three configurations of same-sex coupling -- between white men, between white and black women, and between black men -- and he frames the project by foregrounding the transgressive potential these same-sex couplings can have in a plantation context. Drawing on queer theorist Leo Bersani's notion of "homo-ness," which maintains that gay couples' sexual sameness has the potential to equalize other forms of social difference, Bibler argues that instances of same-sex intimacy in plantation narratives provide models of egalitarian social relations that challenge the hierarchical, heteronormative power structure

Journal

The Southern Literary Journal – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Feb 17, 2011

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