ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how transnational whiteness informs how same-sex sexualities are constituted in the post-apartheid imaginary. This chapter argues that while whiteness during apartheid insisted on policing the borders of an idealised heteronormative masculinity, whiteness in the post-apartheid period is more elastic in that, as the custodian of the normative, it works to camouflage the otherness of same-sex sexualities. The cultural texts that I analyse in this chapter also map transnational connections between white gay imaginaries in South Africa and a broader white assimilationist aesthetic in the Global North. My analysis of how apartheid-era white gay identities are depicted centres on Richard de Nooy’s novel The Big Stick (2010), Christiaan Olwagen’s Afrikaans film Kanarie (2018), Mark Behr’s novel Kings of the Water (2009), and Oliver Hermanus’s film Moffie (2020). The chapter’s theoretical engagement with the normative power of post-apartheid whiteness will draw on the quarterly magazine series Gay Pages and two novels by Michiel Heyns, The Reluctant Passenger (2003) and Lost Ground (2011).
