Liminal Horizons: Time in Contemporary Queer Fiction

Abstract

In his essay Queerness as a Horizon, Muñoz defines the act of queering time as “stepping out of the linearity of straight time” (25) which limits the queer experience by constraining it to the lacking, oppressive space of the present preventing access to the heteronormatively conditioned space of the future. Recognising the inclusion of — and adherence to — the existing, flawed order is not sufficient. Instead, Muñoz proposes seeing queerness as a utopian notion of something not-yet-there, towards which we can strive. Thus, as he notes, “queerness’s ecstatic and horizonal temporality is a path […] to a greater openness to the world” (25). Echoing Muñoz’s vision, contemporary LGBTQ fiction departs from chronological and traditional depictions of time in order to escape the “poisonous and insolvent” (30) present. In this essay, I will explore said departure by considering the novels Hurricane Season and LOTE, as well as the short stories The Englishman and Paul’s Case to illustrate the subversion and narrative queering of time. In doing so, I will look at the ways authors mirror and highlight the individual and communal experience of LGBT communities regarding violence, oppression, erasure, indifference, racism, class struggle and loss, as seen in context of straight time.