Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2023

"Hercules at the Crossroads between Straight Time and ‘Desire Lines’ ? ‘Disorienting’ Classical Reception through Queer Temporality"

Marie-Pierre Harder

Résumé

Drawing on a comparative analysis of the multiple rewritings of the classical myth of ‘Hercules at the Crossroads’ in European literatures as well as on the rich critical discussions surrounding queer temporalities (e.g., Elizabeth Freeman, Jack Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz), the aim of this presentation is twofold. First it will show how the reception of this Greek myth of heroic and virtuous masculinity has variously contributed to the (re)production of moral and narrative models of “straight time” and how a queer reading can both uncover and unsettle their “chrononormativity” (Elizabeth Freeman) through a practice of textual and temporal “disorientation” (Sara Ahmed) that departs from hegemonic and chrono-logical receptions in order to highlight the intersections not only of past and present but also of historical forms and norms of gender, sexuality, and race. Second, on a more metacritical level, it will suggest that the Herculean binary paradigm of the choice at the crossroads might encapsulate the tensions between “heterotemporality” (Madhavi Menon) – a concept that postulates the radical alterity of the past –, on the one hand, and the ‘pleasures and dangers’ of anachronism that arise in any queer reading of the (classical) past on the other. But what if, instead of having to choose like Hercules between the virtuous and the pleasurable paths and pasts, we followed “desire lines” – those marks left on the ground that show where people deviate from compulsory paths – to “generate alternative lines and make new futures possible” (Sara Ahmed)?
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Dates et versions

hal-04890015 , version 1 (16-01-2025)

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  • HAL Id : hal-04890015 , version 1

Citer

Marie-Pierre Harder. "Hercules at the Crossroads between Straight Time and ‘Desire Lines’ ? ‘Disorienting’ Classical Reception through Queer Temporality". Untimely Encounters. Queer Temporalities and the Reception of Graeco-Roman Antiquity, Quintus Immisch & Saskia H. Schomber, Justus-Liebig Universität, Nov 2023, Giessen, Germany. ⟨hal-04890015⟩

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