Queering Time: Temporal Disruptions and Nonlinear Identity in Modern English Fiction.

Abstract

This paper explores the potential of the modern English-language novel to challenge the linearity and the strict adherence to chronology in order to portray queer subjectivity and nonnormal identity. This study investigates five literary works varying in length over a span of almost 100 years of English fiction, specifically Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928), Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry (1989), The Night Watch (2006) by Sarah Waters, Trumpet (1998) by Jackie Kay and How to be Both (2014) by Ali Smith. The novels use various nonlinear techniques: cyclical extension, braided dual-century narration, reverse chronology, polyphonic testimony and formal doubling, to challenge the developmental and reproductive logic of the normative accounts of gendered and sexual selfhood. The temporal disruption of these texts is not just a formal experiment but a representational strategy: nonlinear plotting is a way to tell queer identities in a way that is not linear, one that does not conform to coming-out and coming-of-age teleologies. The paper also introduces a comparative analysis, summarized in table and diagram, of the narrative achrony and the construction of queer identity. The implications for studying contemporary British and postcolonial Anglophone fiction are discussed, as are directions for future research in the field of queer temporality across media..