ABSTRACT
This paper analyses Shyam Selvadurai's Funny Boy through the critical framework of the queer Bildungsroman, with an emphasis on the complex interactions between, body, gender performativity, queer identity and socio-pragmatic interpellation. It examines how subjectivity and sexual identity are socially formed, negotiated, and frequently rejected within the normative frameworks of power poloitics. The study further scrutinises how the body becomes a performative and politicised space where queerness is expressed and contested by focussing on the queer bildung of Arjie. The binary distinctions of male/female, heterosexual/homosexual, and Tamil/Sinhalese are used to frame Arjie's journey from self-doubt to queer self-acceptance, all of which he discreetly rejects. The paper emphasises Arjie's movement through his confrontation with rigid gender binaries, and his eventual acceptance of his identity acts as of both personal growth and political subversion. As a gay Bildungsroman, Funny Boy transcends the genre's conventional tropes by embedding queerness not as a transitional phase, but as a permanent, celebratory mode of being.
