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Queerness, Métissage, and Empire in Marguerite Duras's L'amant and Kim Lefèvre's Métisse Blanche
Jackson, Emily
Jackson, Emily
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2022
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5/19/2022
Abstract
This thesis employs an intersectional framework that considers the interplay between métissage (mixed-race-ness; ethno-cultural syncretism), gender, queerness, and coloniality in L'amant [The Lover] (1984) by Marguerite Duras and Métisse Blanche [White Métisse] (1989) by Kim Lefèvre. Both texts' protagonists can be classified as ethno-culturally hybrid or métisse because of their in-between positionalities vis-à-vis the French and the Indigenous Indochinese populations of the colony. Each girl's métisse identity, combined with her decision to pursue a sexual relationship with an older man, results in her marginalization, ostracization, and abuse. Additionally, both girls pursue a queer, homosocial relationship with another woman in order to survive and to escape their societal and familial dejection. These queer relationships occur within the context of each girl's educational journey, which are impacted not only by the influence of the French Empire, but also by the influence of their mothers, with whom each maintains a complex relationship. The thesis advances an epistemological link between queerness and métissage in which métissage becomes a queer(ing) structure that mobilizes affective relations in such a way that two bodies converge within a socioculturally marginalized space. This space also is mirrored within the epistemological realm of the protagonists as they seek to stabilize their agencies and liminal identities. Amid social and familial milieux that reject them because of their perceived transgressions against societal boundaries, both Marguerite and Kim pursue education as a means of creating a stable future for themselves while turning to their queer relationships to escape abuse and ostracization.
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Modern Language Studies