Queer entanglements: postcolonial intimacies, spaces and times in Greyson and Lewis's Proteus (2003)

[摘要] My dissertation presents a textual analysis of John Greyson and Jack Lewis'sSouth African film, Proteus (2003), which is based on archival records andplots the never-before-told narrative of an intimacy between two inmates on16th century Robben Island. Locating this same-sex intimacy in the 1700s CapeColony has far-reaching implications when considered in relation to theincreasingly pervasive twenty-first century discourse which proposes thathomosexuality is necessarily 'unAfrican'. The film's social and politicalcommentary is, therefore, significant for how we might think about sexuality,among other subjectivities, in post-apartheid South Africa.By analysing the film's formal and thematic attributes, I demonstrate that thedirectors' protean approach to filmmaking has queering effects for the linearnotion of time and the cohesive conceptualisation of identity that the colonialarchive tends to reinforce. I suggest that commonsense notions of time, space,language and identity that structure the archive have allowed for multiplefissures to develop along the trajectory from past to present. As I show, theaforementioned process has almost effaced from official records narratives,such as the one told in Proteus, that would trouble totalising ideas about theintimate orientations of certain individuals. Therefore, I argue that while therecord of this same-sex intimacy does appear in the archive, it has beensubsumed by other, more dominant, narratives. The film's work, which Ireplicate in my reading of it, has been to queer this archive by foregroundingwhat has historically been repressed.In my first chapter, I argue that by enacting what Halberstam (2005) terms amode of 'queer temporality', Proteus carves out spaces in the archive foralternative renditions of history to come into visibility in ways that demandfluidity and heterogeneity. I propose that the strategic filmic mechanismsemployed in Proteus necessarily engender nuanced spectatorial procedures,which call on the spectator to engage reflexively with the film. I continue toargue for the spectator's need to be particularly reflexive throughout thedissertation. My second chapter deals with the filmmakers' strategic use oflanguage in order to present a commentary on the material effects that theacts of 'naming' and 'categorising' have on living bodies. The final chapterexplores a critical perspective which has not previously been brought to bearon the film. I examine how Greyson and Lewis construct positions for theirmain characters from which they may assert their subjectivity - what Mirzoeff(2011) describes as 'the right to look'.

[发布机构] University of the Witwatersrand