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  • Chapter 18 - Queer Nation

  • from Part IV - Making the Modern Nation
  • Edited by Andrew Murphy, Trinity College Dublin
  • Book:
    The Nation in British Literature and Culture
    Published online:
    20 July 2023
    Print publication:
    10 August 2023, pp 308-324

  • Summary

    Drawing on examples from real life as well as fictional representations in literature, cinema, theatre, television and radio, this chapter interrogates the relationship of queerness to the British nation from the Great War to the present. Beginning with Rose Allatini’s 1918 novel Despised and Rejected, the first part documents how and why queers were framed as a suspect minority, a danger to the nation. The second part largely draws on the deliberations of the Wolfenden Committee in the 1950s in explaining why a shift towards a limited tolerance for discreet, respectable, ‘genuine’ homosexuals began to take place. The final part traces the proliferation of queer-themed representations in recent decades alongside the rise of gay liberation and the battle over gay civil liberties. It concludes that queers in Britain have made undeniable progress, but at the cost of co-option for a homonational consensus.