Queering narrative voice

Abstract

ABSTRACTNarrative theory has paid less attention to queer possibilities than narrative itself warrants. This essay takes up the specific subject of narrative voice and asks how it might be ‘queered’ by considering three distinct meanings of the verb ‘to queer’. Seeking as well to establish compatibility between feminist and queer understandings of voice, I explore ways in which both homodiegtetic (first-person) and heterodiegetic (third-person) narrative might take queer forms. Homodiegetic narration may articulate queer sexuality in either implicit or explicit ways; homodiegesis may also resort to strategies of gender ambiguity that render impossible the attribution of a narrator’s sex. I also undertake a revisionist engagement with heterodiegetic narration and with the conventional linkages made between the gender of an author and the gender attributed to the narrative voice. I argue that heterodiegetic narration is conventionally queer insofar as it resists sexual determination through textual means. Finally, I call for a queerer understanding of narration while also questioning the value of different definitions of ‘queer’ for narratological thinking. The essay also proposes an understanding of narrative voice in relation to gender and sexuality that compatibly crosses queer and feminist thought.