Holding on to a Lifeline: Desiring Queer Futurities in Jeanette Winterson's The Stone Gods.

This paper seeks to address the question: How do we 'arrive' at queer(er) futures? To begin with, queer rethinkings of futurity need to make a radical break from logics that find their basis in heteronormativity and reproductive futurity. Sara Ahmed's concept of orientations provides a framework within which we might move beyond nostalgic narratives and the reiteration of these normative logics. Developing orientations that are critically queer (enough) will enable one to choose lines of disorientation, to remember differently, and to integrate the past and future differently in relation to the present. I also look at José Esteban Muñoz's suggestion that we put queer 'on the horizon', viewing it as potentiality for a different world. Further, I regard the element of community as an essential element in one's queer knowledge production, as 'queer' cannot exist in isolation. How to shape our bodies, lives, and worlds differently, and develop queer potentialities that might eventually materialize? In Jeanette Winterson's novel The Stone Gods, I examine how her characters are orientated, and how they reorientate themselves when obstacles throw them off course. What do they do with these queer moments? Do they invest in them, or do those moments just slip away, unnoticed? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]