Intimatopias and the queering of Australian war fiction

ABSTRACT

This article examines how two works of fiction depict male same-sex desire in Australian military history. The protagonists in the novel Bodies of Men and the short story collection The Boys of Bullaroo do not identify as gay or bisexual, yet they develop intensely intimate friendships that become sexual. The texts come from different literary and popular genres, but they both represent what Elizabeth Woledge refers to as intimatopias: ‘a homosocial world in which the social closeness of the male characters engenders intimacy.’ Intimatopic fictions of war are queer texts that challenge binary and normative understandings of sexuality because the characters’ sexual identities are not defined by (homo)sexual acts. Bodies of Men and The Boys of Bullaroo are intentionally ambiguous about the protagonists’ sexualities, which are neither fixed nor fluid, but rather expressed as demisexual extensions of intimacy. The texts also challenge Australia’s digger and Anzac mythologies by presenting soldiers as sensitive, vulnerable and non-heterosexual. As such, intimatopic fictions of war reimagine Australian military history and offer new, queer conceptualizations of same-sex intimacy, mateship and desire.

KEYWORDS:

• Gay
• queer
• romance
• Anzac
• gay fiction

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the feedback Maggie Nolan and Lorinda Cramer provided on earlier drafts, as well as the constructive suggestions provided by the two anonymous referees.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Some scholars have also read David Malouf’s First World War novel Fly Away Peter (1982) as having homosexual undertones. See Barlow (2014); Indyk (1992). Two novels that have lesbian or bisexual First World War nurses or veterans are Tom Keneally’s The Daughters of Mars (2012) and Tessa Lunney’s April in Paris, 1921 (2018).

2. The other common theme is about HIV/AIDS, but given The Boys of Bullaroo takes place pre-HIV/AIDS, it is not surprising that it is not a theme. Still, it was written with the sensibilities of HIV/AIDS in the author and audience’s minds.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Universities Australia-DAAD Australia-Germany Joint Research Co-operation Scheme.

Notes on contributors

Noah Riseman

Noah Riseman is a Professor in History at Australian Catholic University, where he specializes in histories of gender, sexuality and race. He is co-author of Pride in Defence: The Australian Military and LGBTI Service since 1945 (MUP, 2020), Serving in Silence? Australian LGBT Servicemen and Women (NewSouth, 2018) and Indigenous Peoples and the Second World War: The Politics, Experiences and Legacies of War in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Cambridge, 2019).