The Avowal of Difference

Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui

Description

The Avowal of Difference explores the potentialities and limitations that queer theory offers in the context of Latino American texts and subjects. Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui contrasts Latino American sexual genealogies with the Anglo-European "coming out" narrative—and interrogates the centrality of the "coming out" story as the regulating metaphor for gay, lesbian, or queer identities. In its place, the book looks at other strategies—from silence to circumlocution, from disavowal to indifference—to theorize queer subject formation in a Latino American cultural context. The analysis of texts by José Lezama Lima, Luis Zapata, Manuel Puig, Severo Sarduy, Junot Díaz, and others offers a comparative approach to understanding how queer sexualities are shaped and written in other cultural contexts.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Written Through a Body

Part 1. Unwriting the Self

1. Modernismo, Masochism and Queer Potential in Nervo’s El bachiller

2. Queer Losses in Barbachano Ponce’s El diario de José Toledo

3. Adonis’s Silence: Textual Queerness in Zapata’s El vampiro de la colonia Roma

Part 2. Interventions

4. Epistemerotics: Puig, Queer Subjects, and Writing Desire

5. La Manuela’s Return: Transvestism/Identifiction/the Abject in Lemebel’s Loco afán

Part 3. The Body Politic

6. Homosexuality, Disavowal, and Pedagogy in Vargas Llosa’s Los cachorros

7. Sadomasochism in Paradiso: Bound Narratives and Pleasure

8. On the Homo-Baroque: Queering Sarduy’s Baroque Genealogies

Part 4. Queer Latina/o Narratives

9. Queer Latinidad: Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets and Díaz’s Drown

10. Traveling North, Translating Queerness: Rivera-Valdés and the Trouble with Discipline

Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Latin American
• Ethnic studies
• Latin America
• Caribbean

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 19 novembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438454276
• Langue: English

Extrait

The
Avowal
of
Difference
SUNY series, Genders in the Global South
Debra A. Castillo and Shelley Feldman, editors
The
Avowal
of
Difference
Queer Latino American Narratives
Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui
Cover photo courtesy of Eduardo Hernández Santos, photographer; taken in 2005, El Malecón, La Habana, Cuba.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2014 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Ben.
The avowal of difference : queer Latino American narratives / Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui.
pages cm. — (Suny series, genders in the Global South)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-5425-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-5427-6 (ebook)
1. Spanish American fiction—20th century—History and criticism. 2. Homosexuality in literature. 3. Gays in literature. I. Title.
PQ7082.N7S55 2014
860.9’353—dc23
2014003517
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Mark
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Written Through a Body
Part 1. Unwriting the Self
Chapter 1. Modernismo , Masochism and Queer Potential in Nervo’s El bachiller
Chapter 2. Queer Losses in Barbachano Ponce’s El diario de José Toledo
Chapter 3. Adonis’s Silence: Textual Queerness in Zapata’s El vampiro de la colonia Roma
Part 2. Interventions
Chapter 4. Epistemerotics: Puig, Queer Subjects, and Writing Desire
Chapter 5. La Manuela’s Return: Transvestism/Identification/the Abject in Lemebel’s Loco afán
Part 3. The Body Politic
Chapter 6. Homosociality, Disavowal, and Pedagogy in Vargas Llosa’s Los cachorros
Chapter 7. Sadomasochism in Paradiso : Bound Narratives and Pleasure
Chapter 8. On the Homo-Baroque: Queering Sarduy’s Baroque Genealogies
Part 4. Queer Latina/o Narratives
Chapter 9. Queer Latinidad : Thomas’s Down These Mean Streets and Díaz’s Drown
Chapter 10. Traveling North, Translating Queerness: Rivera-Valdés and the Trouble with Discipline
Notes
References
Index
Acknowledgments
This book is part of ongoing conversations and debates on Latino American sexualities and queer theories, and was written in constant dialogue with friends and colleagues whom I would like to thank. First, I want to thank Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, who has always been a thoughtful, ideal reader, interlocutor, and friend, offering me encouragement to move my ideas in new and rich directions. I thank César Braga-Pinto, who has been a perspicacious reader and friend, helping me work though difficult theoretical questions.
At Rutgers, I am grateful to my colleagues in American Studies and Comparative Literature for their intellectual support: I especially thank Louise Barnett, Elin Diamond, Ann Fabian, Leslie Fishbein, Nicole Fleetwood, Angus K. Gillespie, Allan Isaac, Susan Martin-Márquez, and Michael Rockland for reading and commenting on my work.
Over the years I have been very fortunate to present material from the book in many professional venues. From the Latin American Studies Association meetings and the Tepoztlán Institute to lectures at different universities and other places where I shared my work, I received important critical responses to the ideas I offer here. I want to thank Jossianna Arroyo, Marisa Belausteguigoitia, Francisco Cos Montiel, Juan José Cruz, Monica Cyrino, Guillermo de los Reyes, Héctor Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Anita Figueroa, Claudia Hinojosa, Bill Johnson-González, Lawrence LaFountain-Stokes, Sylvia Molloy, the late Carlos Monsiváis, Graciela Montaldo, Patrick O’Connor, Michael O’Rourke, Donald Pease, Joseph Pierce, José Quiroga, Israel Reyes, Rubén Ríos-Ávila, Abel Sierra Madero, and Benigno Trigo, among so many individuals who engaged with and responded to my work.
This book would not have been possible without the support of Debra Castillo; I am indebted to her for the professional and intellectual generosity she has always given me. She introduced me to my editor Beth Bouloukos at SUNY Press. I thank Beth, along with Ryan Morris, for guiding this book project forward with such care. I also owe a big thank-you to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and recommendations made this a stronger work of criticism.
I know that, like most research projects, this book gathers much of its impetus from the classroom: my undergraduate students have always been fount of creative new ideas. I was lucky to have Danica Arahan, Jonathan Levin, and Kenya O’Neill work with me as undergraduate research assistants—I thank them for their help in finding bibliographical materials. My present and former graduate students—especially Chris Rivera, Mia Romano, and Elena Valdéz—shared with me their work, and brought to my attention recent scholarship: I am grateful to them all.
As always, I thank my family, who has been a source of support; and especially my mother Graciela, who has always taught me about courage and love. Finally, I thank Mark Trautman—he joined me every day in the writing of this book, reading and commenting on each page more than once. For fifteen years, he has been the most important emotional and intellectual presence in my life—and I dedicate this book to him with love.
* * *
An earlier version of chapter 3 on Zapata was originally published, “Espacios raros en El vampiro de la colonia Roma de Luis Zapata,” in Cultura Moderna I, 1 (Spring 2005): 33–44. Chapter 5 appeared in a shorter version as “El retorno de la Manuela: travestismo/identificación/lo abyecto en Loco afán de Lemebel” in Inti: Revista de literatura hispánica 69–70 (2009):171–185. Chapter 7, “Sadomasochism in Paradiso : Bound Narratives and Pleasure,” was first published in Foucault in Latin America , edited by Benigno Trigo (New York: Routledge, October 2001), 263–276. An abridged version of chapter 9 appeared under the title “Queer Ellipsis and Latino Identities,” in Textual Identities of “Identity Politics”: Debates from Afar on Recent US Cultural Texts , edited by Juan José Cruz (Tenerife: Universidad de la Laguna, 2009), 49–60.
I wish to thank Ediciones Cátedra for permission to cite from Octavio Paz’s El laberinto de la soledad in the “Introduction” and chapter 3. Also, I thank the Heirs of Manuel Puig (c/o Guillermo Schavelzon Asoc., Agencia Literaria) for permission to cite from The Buenos Aires Affair in chapter 4. I thank Eduardo Hernández Santos for permission to use his photograph as the book’s cover image. This photograph appears in his book El muro: The Wall. I also thank his agent Roberto García, publisher Steven C. Daiber of Red Trillium Press, and Flavio Risech for helping obtain me permission to use the image. Finally, I thank Rutgers for awarding me a University Research Council Subvention grant to support in part the publication of this book.
Introduction Written Through a Body
Para nosotros el cuerpo existe; da gravedad y límites a nuestro ser.
—Octavio Paz, “Máscaras mexicanas” 1
Antes de ser una realidad, los Estados Unidos fueron para mí una imagen. No es extraño: desde niños los mexicanos vemos a ese país como al otro . Un otro que es inseparable de nosotros y que, al mismo tiempo, es radical y esencialmente el extraño.
—Paz, “El espejo indiscreto”
Wild speculations
Some years ago, I wrote about an exchange that I had with a Mexican friend and intellectual about the place of gay and lesbian identities. He “was fascinated by some project I was describing, but interrupted: ‘Why are U.S. academics so obsessed with the question of “gay identity”?’ I was baffled. On other occasions, I have been told by other Latin American intellectuals, ‘I don’t like being classified as a lesbian author.’ Or, ‘I know so-and-so would die before being labeled a gay author.’ ” 2 While this disclaimer of a gay or lesbian identity could be read as an act of closetedness, or taken to the extreme, as an act of queer self-hatred, I proposed another reading. I suggested that the very refusal to claim and assume a “gay” or “lesbian” identity should not be simply read as a marker of indifference toward an identity that could be said has been “imported” from the other side, but rather this refusal might be phrased more strongly as a postcolonial affront to the imposition of identities and categories that do not (cor)respond to the experiences and needs of a particular cultural context. If we follow this more assertive way of reading Latin America’s reluctance to take on gay and lesbian identities as those that define a sexual minoritarian status, then it may be easier to try understanding such a disidentification. 3
But these labels—queer, lesbian, bisexual, and so forth—are quite persistent, and they transform and travel. I remember in the late 1990s when I first talked about queer theory at the Colegio de México, how enthusiastic some of the students were by the t