Notice
“Gendernonconforming Pronouns in Literature”, Lena Mattheis, University of Surrey, UK
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Descriptif
Queerly reshaped pronouns, forms and narrative strategies are flourishing in contemporary non-binary, trans and queer literature. From singular ‘they’ to ‘it’ to neopronouns to the collective voice of ‘we’, gender-transgressing narratives mark themselves as such through narratorial perspective, queer(ed) and trans(ed) pronoun use and other(ed) elements of form. Gendernonconforming pronoun use in literature allows us to see how nonbinary or unusual pronouns not only play a part in respecting gender identities, they also belong to rich queer and trans literary histories, as well as to a thriving contemporary literary landscape. Unusual pronouns are used in poems, novels and stories, not despite being ‘cumbersome’, but because they are beautiful and fulfil aesthetic functions.
In this talk, I therefore want to present a few interesting examples of queerly used pronouns from literary history and contemporary writing and explore some of the implications queer, trans and gendernonconforming pronoun use has for LGBTQIA2S+ narratives. To better understand how queer points of view affect other elements of form, I want to think about queer pronoun use in texts such as Rae Spoon’s Green Glass Ghosts, which uses generic singular they, Hijab Butch Blues, which uses ‘They’ for god, and Sara Taylor’s The Lauras, which leaves gender ambiguous by avoiding pronouns and by using the ungendered ‘I’. I am interested in how gender-nonconforming protagonists queer and trans language, structure and narrative voice and what the implications of transgressive pronouns and formal strategies might be. The differences between genderneutral, genderambiguous and nonbinary or nonconforming pronoun use are at the centre of my thinking about these texts.
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