“What a fuss about probably nothing”: Iris Murdoch’s Ordinary Queerness

By virtue of its critical distance from the normal, Warner's sense of queer calls a host of traditional concepts-such as the individual, love, and goodness-into question. In what follows, I make the case for Murdoch's relevance to Queer Studies through an analysis of her thirteenth novel,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Studies in the literary imagination 2018-09, Vol.51 (2), p.115-135
Main Author: Fine, David J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
British & Irish literature
Criticism and interpretation
English literature
Humanism
Irish literature
LGBTQ studies
Literary studies
Love
Murdoch, Iris
Murdoch, Iris (1919-1999)
Novels
Plot (Narrative)
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:By virtue of its critical distance from the normal, Warner's sense of queer calls a host of traditional concepts-such as the individual, love, and goodness-into question. In what follows, I make the case for Murdoch's relevance to Queer Studies through an analysis of her thirteenth novel, A Fairly Honourable Defeat.1 I argue that the text's representation of queer desire challenges regimes of the normal, in Warner's sense, but does so without endorsing or inducing critical detachment. When the press interviews him regarding his decision to give up "the biological warfare game," Julius "didn't talk about principles" (4); rather, he simply stated that "he was bored" (5). In quick succession, this opening tete-a-tete broaches three important topics: the intellectual's role in modern society, the tension between fact and value in scholarly research, and the tendency for intellectuals to theorize away an extant difficulty.
ISSN:0039-3819
2165-2678
2165-2678
DOI:10.1353/sli.2018.0016