Shaping the boys’ South African identity: Suppressed queer space in spud and Inxeba

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore how “queerness” is both represented and suppressed in select South African fiction. The study will investigate to what extent a post-colonial form of education reinforces the colonial and apartheid traditions of South African normative masculinities in same-sex, educational environments. These aspects will be explored and investigated in John Van de Ruit‟s Spud: A wickedly funny novel (2005), Spud: The madness continues… (2007), Spud: Learning to Fly (2010), and will be complemented with an investigation of the recent South African film, Inxeba (2017). The series of novels and films demonstrate how the contestation between queerness and traditional masculinity threatens heteronormativity and how various forms of violence try to enforce a dominant South African masculinity.