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patriarchal culture’s reification of manhood. McCullers

turns the army into a grotesque site of alternative

masculinities and seething homoeroticism. Far from a

discrete entity that has nothing to do with the political and

the national, sexuality, I will show, is in fact a powerful

critical lens through which we can peer into the ideological

mechanism that produces meaning in a particular cultural

moment of U.S. imperialist expansion. In her daring

portrayal of masculinities that embrace castration and

alterity, McCullers proves herself a courageous artist with a

discerning eye for the oppressive nature of hegemonic

masculinity and its affiliations with heteropatriarchy and

imperial nationhood.

Key Words:

Carson McCullers,

Reflections in a Golden Eye

,

homosexuality, nationalism, masculinity