• "Through deft textual analysis, relevant historical
and literary research, and a firm grasp of the implications of queer
theory for this subject, Michael Bibler makes a strong case for
the capacity of same-sex relations in plantation novels (relations
which may be homo-social, homoerotic, and/or homo-sexual) to undermine
the rigidities of those perspectives that represent this literature
exclusively in terms of ideologies of racial, sexual, and class
difference. Cotton’s Queer Relations serves as the
foundation for a new and effective approach to the problem of social
inequalities in southern literature."—Barbara Ladd,
Emory University, author of Resisting History: Gender, Modernity,
and Authorship in William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Eudora
Welty
•"Michael Bibler opens—I should say pries open—a
new door in southern studies. Behind this door is a body of writing
that presents homosexuality as both a fact of nature and a construct
that works to maintain the South’s hierarchical power structures.
With its focus on the southern plantation and its ongoing representations
in literature and popular culture, Cotton’s Queer Relations
illuminates a crucial but often ignored irony: The South’s
seemingly official desire to make homosexuality disappear actually
speaks to the region’s inability to stifle the expression
of homosexual desire."—Will Brantley, Middle Tennessee
State University, author of Feminine Sense in Southern Memoir
|
Cotton’s Queer Relations:
Same-Sex Intimacy and the Literature of the
Southern Plantation, 1936–1968 |
| |
| Michael P. Bibler |
| 312 pages, 6 x 9 |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2791-6 • $55.00 |
| paper 978-0-8139-2792-3 • $22.50 |
| American Literatures Initiative |
| March 2009 |
 |
Finally breaking through heterosexual clichés of flirtatious
belles and cavaliers, sinister black rapists and lusty "Jezebels,"Cotton's
Queer Relations exposes the queer dynamics embedded in myths
of the southern plantation. Focusing on works by Ernest J. Gaines,
William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman, Katherine
Anne Porter, Margaret Walker, William Styron, and Arna Bontemps,
Michael P. Bibler shows how each one uses figures of same-sex
intimacy to suggest a more progressive alternative to the pervasive
inequalities tied historically and symbolically to the South's
most iconic institution.
Bibler looks specifically at relationships between white men
of the planter class, between plantation mistresses and black
maids, and between black men, arguing that while the texts portray
the plantation as a rigid hierarchy of differences, these queer
relations privilege a notion of sexual sameness that joins the
individuals as equals in a system where equality is rare indeed.
Bibler reveals how these models of queer egalitarianism attempt
to reconcile the plantation’s regional legacies with national
debates about equality and democracy, particularly during the
eras of the New Deal, World War II, and the civil rights movement.
Cotton's Queer Relations charts bold new territory in
southern studies and queer studies alike, bringing together history
and
cultural theory to offer innovative readings of classic southern
texts.
Michael P. Bibler is Lecturer in American
Literature at the University of Manchester in England.
|
