Abstract
This chapter argues that Burdekin introduces sociopolitical enlightenment, ethics, and hope via queer desire, causing the reader to confront the damaging effects of homophobia as well as misogyny. Burdekin presents queerness as organic rather than situational, differentiating herself from a range of mid-century intellectuals who misunderstood homosexuality as a conscious choice, a disorder, or a circumstantial phenomenon. The chapter also addresses how Swastika Night anticipates key facets of both Nineteen Eighty-Four and The Handmaid’s Tale, examining some of Swastika Night’s deficiencies, including its failure to acknowledge anti-Semitism and its idealistic conception of socialism, especially its favorable view of Stalin’s Soviet Russia. Equally troubling is Burdekin’s ambivalence toward English imperialism, which borders at times on apologism, revealing a jingoistic reverence for the English.
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Horan, T. (2018). Katharine Burdekin’s Swastika Night, a Gay Romance. In: Desire and Empathy in Twentieth-Century Dystopian Fiction. Palgrave Studies in Utopianism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70675-7_5
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