Andrés Ibarra Cordero | Queer Chronotopes in Contemporary Fiction

Andrés Ibarra Cordero | Queer Chronotopes in Contemporary Fiction | Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University of Amsterdam (UvA) | Supervisor: Rodrigo Andrés González | 2016-2020

Queer Chronotopes in Contemporary Fiction

This comparative research project examines queer chronotopes in contemporary English and Spanish fiction. This analysis draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope to analyse textual configurations that, following recent queer theory’s turn on “temporalities”, are at odds with normative and hegemonic spatiotemporal world-views. The categories of time and space give meaning to the subject’s experience and reality; hence, I use them to read queer subjective experiences. I regard queer as a concept that floats between the homoerotic, gender transgression and non-normative temporal experiences. If normative time is linear, teleological, reproductive and future-oriented, queer time resists following those normative scripts. Subsequently, the concepts behind my chronotopic analysis are mainly informed by the theoretical underpinning of scholars like Dinshaw (1999); Edelman (2004); Halberstam (2005); Love (2007); Freeman (2010); and Muñoz (2010). In general, I address the following questions: Do these queer chronotopes necessarily emphasize the subversive potential of these identities? What are some common patterns in these chronotopes? Are these chronotopes always in a liminal condition?