Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Intimatopias and the Queering of Australian War Fiction
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'This article examines how two works of fiction depict male same-sex desire in Australian military history. The protagonists in the novel Bodies of Men and the short story collection The Boys of Bullaroo do not identify as gay or bisexual, yet they develop intensely intimate friendships that become sexual. The texts come from different literary and popular genres, but they both represent what Elizabeth Woledge refers to as intimatopias: ‘a homosocial world in which the social closeness of the male characters engenders intimacy.’ Intimatopic fictions of war are queer texts that challenge binary and normative understandings of sexuality because the characters’ sexual identities are not defined by (homo)sexual acts. Bodies of Men and The Boys of Bullaroo are intentionally ambiguous about the protagonists’ sexualities, which are neither fixed nor fluid, but rather expressed as demisexual extensions of intimacy. The texts also challenge Australia’s digger and Anzac mythologies by presenting soldiers as sensitive, vulnerable and non-heterosexual. As such, intimatopic fictions of war reimagine Australian military history and offer new, queer conceptualizations of same-sex intimacy, mateship and desire.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies Precarious Futures : Cultural Studies in Pandemic Times vol. 34 no. 6 2020 21049944 2020 periodical issue '... The issue arises out of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia conference ‘Cultural Transformation’ held in December 2019, in Meanjin (Brisbane), on the land of the Jagera and Turrbal peoples. The articles in this special issue originate from this conference, and have thus been written and revised in the unusually difficult circumstances caused by the emergence of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Taking up (and indeed living) the theme of ‘precarious futures’, the authors of these papers canvass topics related to this issue, including: environmental transformations caused by climate change and species extinction; global food security; modes of protest in climate crisis and pandemic crisis; affective politics; colonialism; drone technologies; science fiction realities; futurist biologies; resurrection science and art; feminist hauntology; feminist futures and academic precarity; and current approaches in medical humanities to emerging health issues.' (Publication introduction) 2020 pg. 940-954
Last amended 3 Feb 2021 10:01:46
940-954 Intimatopias and the Queering of Australian War Fictionsmall AustLit logo Continuum : Journal of Media and Cultural Studies
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