Queer stylistics, unqueer politics: revisiting Bruce Chatwin

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay considers Bruce Chatwin from a fresh perspective of queer stylistics. Special emphasis is laid on his cruising between fact and fiction in travel writing and his own life, as well as on his constant queering of generic and representational norms. The Chatwinesque style is defined here through its textual and generic transgressions, as part of which the Foucauldian-Barthesian and French feminist tactics of jouissance are reframed as a queer bodily practice. However, when read through queer theory, Chatwin’s output comes across as ridden with internal contradictions. While resembling queer practices of failing, cruising, or generally subversion, Chatwin’s works fail to align with queer ethics. It is so because his queer style is not so much used to critique the socio-cultural conventions of his times as for symbolic and economic success, marketed in the mainstream, heteronormative economy.