In the Coffin of Current U.S. Assimilationist Politics: Reading the Homonormative Politics of Stephanie Meyer's Vampire

Abstract

Broadly, this thesis is a project about queerness and its relationship to Twilight. This thesis seeks to recuperate the queer in the Twilight series. Using discourse analysis, I explore both common and uncommon representations of queerness and the popular and unpopular discourses of Twilight. While both Chapter 1 and 2 offer paranoid readings of the Twilight series and its relationship to queerness, Chapter 3 presents a reparative reading of the text. I argue that Meyer’s tame and conservative vampire, conventionally represented as being either sexually ambiguous or outside the norm, is symptomatic of a modern culture that is becoming more accepting of odd, strange, and/or queer individuals. I maintain, however, that the normalization of specific "ways of being" still comes at the expense of the constitutive “other”. Furthermore, I understand this process of normalizing a monster to be representative of a seemingly apolitical, yet violent, Faludian backlash toward queers.