Quare Modernism? Contesting exclusions in the construction of queerness in modernist Irish women's fiction

Lead Research Organisation: University of Cambridge
Department Name: Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies

Abstract

This project will explore queer and "quare" readings of novels by some of the most prominent Irish modernist women
writers: Elizabeth Bowen, Kate O'Brien and Molly Keane. Informed by intersectional feminist theory and queer of colour
critique, it will seek to define how far queerness is useful as a radical political project in the Irish context. While
acknowledging the liberatory potential of queerness in the culture of post-independence Ireland, it is also vital to
understand the limitations of a canon of queer cultural production dominated by middle- to upper-class, able-bodied,
white Irish writers. Thus, this project will focus on the exclusions - of class, race and ability, primarily - that are
constitutive of the queer imaginary in the novels of these pioneering writers. The eventual aim of this research is the
delineation of a new "quare theory", following on from the efforts of Irish studies scholars such as Valente, Giffney and
O'Rourke. This theory will be rigorous in its analysis of interlocking systems of oppression, paying close attention to the
constitutive effects of racism and classism in the shaping of structures and identities. It will be a decolonial and
intersectional methodology that will seek out alternative models of identity, community and temporality. Inspired by queer
scholars of colour such as Muñoz, I will ask how the Irish experience of modernity in the twentieth century relates to the
queer, or quare, experience of temporality and futurity.

Publications

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