Perpetuation of the gay male stereotype: A study on camping & closeting the gay male subculture in Hollinghurst's fiction

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Tezin Türü: Doktora

Tezin Yürütüldüğü Kurum: Orta Doğu Teknik Üniversitesi, Eğitim Fakültesi, Yabancı Diller Eğitimi Bölümü, Türkiye

Tezin Onay Tarihi: 2012

Öğrenci: SERKAN ERTİN

Danışman: NURTEN BİRLİK

Özet:

This study intends to analyse the terms camp and closet in Alan Hollinghurst’s fiction, since all four of his novels - The Swimming-Pool Library (1988), The Folding Star (1993), The Spell (1998), and The Line of Beauty (2004) - investigate the gay male experience throughout the late-twentieth century The point in analysing these terms in Hollinghurst’s work is to find out whether the author writes from the margin or in the centre to recreate the origin. Gay subjectivities are of great concern to this study, yet it does not mean that it will be a product of identity politics. Identity politics does regard gender, race, or ethnicities, which are nothing but social constructions, as fixed or biologically determined traits. Thus, identity politics, while trying to recentre the decentred and marginalised identities, re-establishes the binary structure of the Western thought. This study analyses how Hollinghurst, by camping and closeting the gay male, re-produces homosexuality as a distinct identity with a subculture of its own.