"Wotcher, Harry!"

Yes, I admit that I have read all of the Harry Potter books. Certainly there are issues with the books that upon further investigation, from a critical point of view, one would find very problematic. They are works whose aesthetics are firmly grounded within white, male heteronormativity. However, Rowling does work with the narrative in ways that subvert the aforementioned master narrative. Hermione is a character that the author seems to struggle with because Rowling created her as a strong female. However, as the books progress there is this tension created by Hermione transgressing traditional roles of femaleness that Rowling seems to avowal and disavowal at the same time and Hermione's resolve seems to be dissolving slowly...the disavowal becomes stronger ( I note this particularly within the fourth book). Ginny is another strong female character. The fact that she comes from a family of men seems to give her a sort of rebellious agency...she definitely is more assertively vocal in standing up for herself in terms of male dominance than Hermione. Professor McGonagall is also an extremely strong female character who creates resistant space that, despite fulfilling some types of stereotypicality, exerts an autonomy that has not yet been (to this point anyway) compromised.
Professor Snape, Tonks, Luna Lovegood, and Neville Longbottom are really good examples of sites of queerness. It is interesting indeed how these bodies negotiate their "I-ness" throughout the series...especially within the fifth book. Professor Snape is probably the most complex character within the Harry Potter books. I think Rowling did an excellent job in portraying how one negotiates a marginal body so that the readers' perception of right/wrong and good/bad are problematized on many different levels. Snape is a character that actively challenges binary construction and he, more than the others, disrupts our typical notions of the dominant narrative that the author is working with/under. He also is a character that subverts the subject(ivity) negotiations for the rest of the characters...with the exception of Dumbledore and, perhaps, Hermione. Tonks is also a fascinating character. Her greeting to Harry: "Wotcher, Harry" is telling because the word "wotcher" is classed. It is a word that essentially means "what's up?" or "hello" and is used throughout the working class discourse community in Britain. Furthermore, I also like the fact that Tonks has the ability to morph her body. She can shapeshfit physical features such as her hair color and/or face. It is a rare gift and looked upon positively. Again, Rowling's depiction of the fluidity of the body and how it can transgress normativity at the site of gender and class is, indeed, provocative.

The fifth book is probably my favorite thus far. I think that it has the most complex storyline and Rowling's development of the characters seems to go beyond typical notions of reader expectation. In some ways, this is typical of a "good" story but I argue that it is the character of Snape and his subject position(ing) that gives this text its edge. To add to this, the character of Dolores Umbridge is also an extremely interesting character in the fifth book. The site of the ideological deployment of education and how it inscribes itself upon the body is clearly seen in her punishment of Harry. I immediately think of Foucault and Althusser in this instance. I think that the "detention scene" in the fifth book is particularly telling in its depiction of how a body is inscribed by ideology.

Finally, I think that as a reader of these texts, I find myself making comparisons from the text to material life. I think as readers we all do this. The text mediates how we negotiate our subjectivities within the culture/discourse communities that we are apart of. For instance, I can point out in my life someone who acts out or plays the role of Dolores Umbridge and someone who fulfills the role of Cornelius Fudge...hence making my existence in life at this point almost intolerable. But, please don't assume that I think of myself as Harry! I think that of all the characters in the books, I am more "Snapish." I guess this is a good example of how, as a reader, I am making connections between a story and its reflection within the material world...the world that I live in...and how I too am negotiating and renegotiating my own subjectivity/subjectivities...too bad we don't have spells though.