Writing queer performance: Hubert Fichte's inimitable Imitations

Abstract

This article seeks to make a case for regarding the German author Hubert Fichte, who died in 1986 at the tragically early age of 50, as a proto-queer author at least on a par with Jean Genet. It does so by subjecting to minute analysis a seminal passage from Fichte's third novel, and radiating out from there to show how, especially in his characteristic invocations of camp, drag, ritual and imitation, he interrogates the very notion of ‘identity’ in a way which not only anticipates some of the most celebrated insights of queer theory, but also puts them into inimitable (writerly) practice.