Queering the South: The Plantation as Homotopia

Abstract

In Cotton's Queer Relations, Michael Bibler adds to an emer gent field of scholarship that seeks to uncover both the presence and significance of same-sex desire in southern literature. Bibler offers il luminating and suggestive readings on a range of mid-twentieth cen tury plantation narratives, arguing that same-sex relationships are both a constant, if previously unacknowledged, feature of the southern plan tation and a potentially powerful threat to the same. Bibler focuses on three configurations of same-sex coupling—be tween white men, between white and black women, and between black men—and he frames the project by foregrounding the transgressive po tential these same-sex couplings can have in a plantation context. Draw ing on queer theorist Leo Bersani's notion of homo-ness, which main tains that gay couples' sexual sameness has the potential to equalize other forms of social difference, Bibler argues that instances of same-sex intimacy in plantation narratives provide models of egalitarian social re lations that challenge the hierarchical, heteronormative power structure of the plantation. In addition, Bibler maintains that homosexuality con stitutes a privileged site from which to rethink the vertical networks of power and authority that enable white men's domination of blacks and