Antinormativity notwithstanding: The normative male author and politics of queer literary interpretation

<ns3:p>Setting off from the recent critical turn towards habitual antinormativity in queer theory, this article reconstructs various conceptualizations, contestations and retheorizations of normativity and antinormativity in queer theory and masculinity studies. While a number of contemporary gender-focused literary scholars have shown the ways in which the uncritical adoption of antinormative presuppositions results in a reductive understanding of normativity as necessarily static and backward-looking, the issue of what a post-antinormative queer theory would look like remains open to speculation. Drawing on these studies, the article formulates a concept of the “normative male author” as an exercise in post-antinormative perspective on the connections between the politics of queer inquiry, literature and masculinity.</ns3:p>