In-Between: Genre and Gender Hybridity, and Pirkko Saisio's Novel Punainen erokirja

This article discusses intersections of genres and genders and their theorization in the contemporary literary scene and suggests a queer reading of a short-listed contemporary Finnish novel, written by the well-known author and theatre figure Pirkko Saisio. The aim of the article is to present feminist genre theories, influenced by Bakhtinian conception of genres, Foucauldian and Butlerian theorizations of genders and sexualities, and the critical discussions in queer studies. The article reads Saisio's novel as a demonstration through an adaptation of a theoretical concept, namely genre hybridity, combined with another concept adaptation, gender hybridity. The article concludes by suggesting that although the novel can be seen as a representative of an entirely new literary genre, that is queer literature, it works in its historical context better as a hybrid genre that refuses monolithic genre locations, and this way comes closer to the theoretical concept of the constantly hybrid, transgressing and boundary-breaking queer.