Intersectional (In)visibility in the 21st-Century South African Queer-Themed Short Story

Through a comparative reading of four queer-themed South African short stories published in the 2010s, this article argues that recent South African short fiction brings new subtleties and nuances to the straightforward and often-unproblematized valorization of queer “visibility.” The article contends that the stories foreground the intersectionality of queer visibility in post-apartheid South Africa—pointing to some of the ways in which the contemporary South African moment continues to be defined by hetero-patriarchal norms, class disparities, and racialized divisions. The article further examines how the stories create textured queer visibilities that humanize queer subjectivities and subvert dominant racialized and gendered discourses in the post-apartheid present.