Should The Use Of Queer Time And Space In Alison Bechdel's Fun Home

Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir, Fun Home, is more than a detailing of her early life. Rather, it is an exploration of her home life, her family relations, and of being queer in a heteronormative setting, which, in retrospect, is further complicated and sometimes overshadowed by her father’s own queerness. The use of queer time and space, concepts articulated by Judith Halberstam in A Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives, are used to vastly different ends by Alison and her father. While Alison grows into a queer setting and allows it to take root in her life, Bruce Bechdel is gradually undone by the choices he makes in relation to his secret queerness. In Fun Home, queer time and space prove to be as constructive or destructive as their occupants make it, especially in relation to Alison and Bruce.

Queer time and space are not terms with wholly concise definitions. Often, they are a matter of

The family home most of all serves as his queer space, though heavily disguised. All of Bruce’s energy has been poured into restoring the house to its former glory. According to Alison, historical restoration “was his passion. And I mean passion in every sense of the word. Libidinal. Manic. Martyred” (Bechdel 7). In repairing the various downtrodden aspects of the home, Bruce takes his stifled energy, particularly any stifled sexual energy, as indicated by Alison’s use of “libidinal,” and discovers another outlet that affords him complete control over the results. Living in a small town not only with extended family so near, but during a time when homosexuality was certainly not an acceptable way to identify, Bruce Bechdel would have had little control over the reactions of the people in his life had he opted to pursue an openly queer lifestyle. His meticulously crafted façade allows him to make use of that energy and divert any suspicions that he might be anything other than a stern family