Thinking through Queer Narrative Forms with Ben Marcus and Renee Gladman

ABSTRACT:This essay aims to reimagine our narrative and queer theories by speculating on possible queer narrative forms. I start from three facets of this problem: the literary archive that has shaped queer theory, the narratological archive that has lately started grappling with its intersection with queer theory, and new queer narrative, via Gregory Bredbeck’s discussion of New Narrative and the distinctions between gay and queer narrative, narrative and antinarrative. From the theoretical frameworks, I turn to a close reading of the remarkable experimental narratives of Renee Gladman’s The Ravickians and Ben Marcus’s Age of Wire and String to show how not all experimental narratives are queer, or even New Narrative, but some open up remarkably queer possibilities.