Publication Date
2026
Abstract
This project positions Rita Indiana’s speculative novel Tentacle as a critical site for examining queer temporalities. Its embodied system of time travel literalizes the frameworks of “temporal drag” and “queer futurity” proposed by Elizabeth Freeman and José Esteban Muñoz, demonstrating the material consequences of time on the queer body. Further, my argument is staked in disrupting the myth of a progressive future, tracing how oppressive structures do not resolve over time but rather complicate. This framing can be observed both textually and metatextually, lending to Jack Halberstam’s concept of “queer failure.” Overall, I suggest that Indiana’s queer dystopia offers a necessary recognition of readers who are frequently subjected to the disappointments of the present, which were once packaged as possibilities of the future.
Department
Department of English, College of Liberal Arts
Degree Name
Master of Arts in English & American Literature
Advisor(s)
Marion C. Rohrleitner