This essay argues that Shakespeare's Coriolanus theorizes the complex terrain of identity in ways that allow us to read the play as a queer text. In particular, I argue that Coriolanus theorizes the desire that attaches to the category of the fag-hag. This may seem an odd claim to make about a play that not only includes no character whom we might identify as a fag-hag but also predates the emergence of the fag-hag as a category in the twentieth century. Yet the problems of ontology and temporality that my claim touches on are very much theorized by Coriolanus. The play thinks through questions of desire - who does the fag-hag desire, and how does that desire form her identity? - and temporality - does the fag-hag's desire for a gay man cancel out possible prior desires for a straight man? It also engages with current articulations of queer theory in asking whether or not we can describe desire using terms that do not have temporal a??legitimacya?? - can a current term be used as a heuristic with which to engage a text written over 400 years ago? And finally, can we think of Coriolanus itself, not as an object for queer theory's analysis, but rather, as itself a queer theoretical intervention that thinks through the kind of relationality the fag-hag assumes?View full textDownload full textKeywords Coriolanus , queer theory, identity, desire, temporalityRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17450918.2011.573085
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