Subculture or High Literature?

On The Sexual Politics of Contemporary Hungarian Literature

Abstract

In this study, drawing on Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s conception of value, I examine the reception of contemporary Hungarian literary works in which the subjectivity of sexual and gender minorities serves as the primary structuring force. I focus on the interpretive strategies surrounding Zsuzsa Rakovszky’s VS, Tibor Noé Kiss’s Incognito (Inkognitó), and Ádám Nádasdy’s The Bearded Neptune (A szakállas Neptun). The study containsthree-parts. In the first part, I outline the theoretical and methodological position from which I approach the reception history of these works. The second part analyzes the discourses emerging around the literary corpus through the following questions: what constructions of subjectivity shape these discourses, and what forms of literary interpretation do they imply? Do they reflect on their own positions of enunciation? In the final part, I summarize and comment on the findings of the discourse analysis.