Sign-In
Cart
South Africa and the Dream of Love to Come: Queer Sexuality and the Struggle for Freedom
Paperback
Literary CriticismFiction Anthologies
ISBN13: 9780816677696
Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Pr
Published: Aug 2 2012
Pages: 352
Weight: 0.95
Height: 1.00 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.40
Language: English
After apartheid, South Africa established a celebrated new political order that imagined the postcolonial nation as belonging equally to the descendants of indigenous people, colonizing settlers, transported slaves, indentured laborers, and immigrants. Its constitution, adopted in 1996, was the first in the world to include gays and lesbians as full citizens. Brenna M. Munro examines the stories that were told about sexuality, race, and nation throughout the struggle against apartheid in order to uncover how these narratives ultimately enabled gay people to become imaginable as fellow citizens. She also traces how the gay, lesbian, or bisexual person appeared as a stock character in the pageant of nationhood during the transition to democracy. In the process, she offers an alternative cultural history of South Africa.
Munro asserts that the inclusion of gay people made South Africans feel modern-at least for a while. Being gay or being lesbian was reimagined in the 1990s as distinctly South African, but the newness that made these sexualities apt symbols for a transformed nation can also be understood as foreign and un-African. Indeed, a Western-style gay identity is often interpreted through the formula gay equals modernity equals capitalism. As South Africa's reentrance into the global economy has failed to bring prosperity to the majority of its citizens, homophobic violence has been on the rise.
Employing a wide array of texts-including prison memoirs, poetry, plays, television shows, photography, political speeches, and the postapartheid writings of Nobel Laureates Nadine Gordimer and J. M. Coetzee-Munro reports on how contemporary queer activists and artists are declining to remain ambassadors for the rainbow nation and refusing to become scapegoats for the perceived failures of liberation and liberalism.
Also in
Fiction Anthologies
Women on Food: Charlotte Druckman and 115 Writers, Chefs, Critics, Television Stars, and Eaters
Druckman, Charlotte
Paperback
On Quality: An Inquiry Into Excellence: Unpublished and Selected Writings
Pirsig, Wendy K.
Pirsig, Robert M.
Hardcover
James Weldon Johnson: Writings (Loa #145): The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man / Along This Way / Essays and Editorials / Selected Poems
Johnson, James Weldon
Hardcover
Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Shelley, Mary
Paperback
Sez I to Myself: The Collected Essays of Frank and Malachy McCourt
McCourt, Frank
McCourt, Malachy
Hardcover
Sherlock: Short Story Anthology: Ten New Cases. Ten Master Storytellers. One Immortal Detective.
The Conan Doyle Estate
Hardcover
异乡故人（壹嘉-人文）
刘宗坤
Paperback
Here in New England: Unforgettable Stories of People, Places, and Memories That Connect Us All.
Allen, Mel
Paperback
The Greek Tragedies: Seventeen Plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides
Sophocles
Euripides
Aeschylus
Paperback
The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Writings: Poems, Tales, Essays, and Reviews
Poe, Edgar Allan
Hardcover
Learn Russian with Beginner Stories: Interlinear Russian to English
Van Den End, Kees
Hyplern, Bermuda Word
Gettys, Serafima
Paperback
Obvious Adams -- The Story of a Successful Businessman: New Business Edition
Updegraff, Robert R.
Paperback
Jane Austen for Every Day of the Year: A Charming Collection of Wit & Wisdom
Richardson, Tara
Hardcover
Japanese Folktales for Language Learners: Bilingual Legends and Fables in Japanese and English (Free Online Audio Recording)
Sato, Anna
Sato, Eriko
Paperback