Abstract

This thesis aims to better understand queer theories of time and space in relation to the experiences of those who loiter, who lounge, who fuck against the rush of straight time and space. The project does so via an investigation of the related figures of the flâneur and the cruiser, considering what latent potentials they hold for queer futurity. This research examines these themes in the science fiction novel Dhalgren by Samuel R. Delany, as well as Delany’s autobiographical writings. I posit that, through a total rejection of straight and capitalist time, Dhalgren’s fictional city of Bellona and its residents effectively put into practice a queer world that theorists such as José Esteban Muñoz conceive as impossible in our own here and now. Moreover, by way of this imaginative turn, Delany crystalizes a clear image of the world that cruisers and flâneurs alike are striving towards – a world where all are free to wander idly and to desire publicly without legal or moral consequence.