Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity

Anshu Kiran, Smarika Pareek

2023

Abstract

This article emerges from the usual analyses of Shyam Selvadurai’s novel Funny boy, which had focused on its potential meaning as a Western “coming out” bildungsroman or a memoir of Sinhalese and Tamil nationalism's social strife. In this essay, this usual convention is further preceded and interpreted as “counter-bildungsroman” which weaves Hegemonic Masculinity theory into Arjie's narrative of gender and his queer awakening during the 1983 anti-Tamil violence in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Arjie playing “Bride-Bride” at the novel's start and wilfully misquoting British poetry at its end promotes heteronormative ideals and exclusive identity formations. Even though he is young, and the civil war symbolizes the internal conflict of erotic awakening, the Protagonist's sexual misdemeanors in heteropatriarchal school and home threaten the masculine populism that drove the coup attempt. Thus, R. W. Connell's Hegemonic Masculinity theory shows that the novel's narrative space mirrors Arjie’s liminal sexual and gender identities.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Kiran A. and Pareek S. (2023). Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity. In Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies - Volume 1: PAMIR; ISBN 978-989-758-687-3, SciTePress, pages 767-772. DOI: 10.5220/0012503300003792

in Bibtex Style

@conference{pamir23,
author={Anshu Kiran and Smarika Pareek},
title={Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies - Volume 1: PAMIR},
year={2023},
pages={767-772},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012503300003792},
isbn={978-989-758-687-3},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 1st Pamir Transboundary Conference for Sustainable Societies - Volume 1: PAMIR
TI - Funny Boy and Hegemonic Masculinity
SN - 978-989-758-687-3
AU - Kiran A.
AU - Pareek S.
PY - 2023
SP - 767
EP - 772
DO - 10.5220/0012503300003792
PB - SciTePress