REUNIONES FALLIDAS: HOMOSEXUALIDAD Y REVOLUCIÓN (MEXICO, BRASIL Y ARGENTINA, 1976-2004)
In this dissertation, I study an aspect unexplored in both the field of history and that of literary studies: the relationship between two groups that offered resistance to the authoritarian governments of the seventies, the activists of the revolutionary left, convinced of the necessity of an armed fight, and the homosexuals, committed to the cause of sexual liberation.
The novels under consideration propose a series of answers about the failure of a convergence that could never have been: that of homosexuals and the Latin American left, or in broader terms, a meeting of two projects that many thought were analogous: sexual liberation and political revolution, under the assumption that the former would allow the reorganization of social life under new and more inclusive parameters.
The issue that guides this dissertation is the different ways in which homosexual subjectivity is reconfigured in order to be accepted as a revolutionary agent, where gender has a fundamental role since femininity can either have a positive and subversive value or else be perceived as a sign of weakness and decadence.
The first chapter is a historical and cultural introduction to the Latin American revolutionary left, giving special attention to its views about sexuality. In the second chapter, I consider Manuel Puigs "El beso de la mujer araña", which has a foundational value within the series because it is the first novel to articulate the historical debate between homosexuality and the revolutionary left. I also analyze "La más maravillosa música (una historia de amor peronista)", by Osvaldo Bazán, where the question about a possible alliance between homosexuality and the political left is revisited. In the third chapter, I study a series of texts where the different representations of homosexuality are governed by rigid sexual and gender politics. I include "Nivaldo e Jerônimo" by Darcy Penteado; "El sol de la tarde", by Luis González de Alba; and "Entre la resignación y el paraíso. Desnudos en la alberca", by Hugo Villalobos. The last chapter examines the novel "Stella Manhattan" by Silviano Santiago, to investigate how different homosexual subjectivities complicate and reevaluate the problem outlined by Puig.
Advisor:Eric O. Clarke; Hermann Herlinghaus; Bobby J. Chamberlain; Gerald Martin
School:University of Pittsburgh
School Location:USA - Pennsylvania
Source Type:Master's Thesis
Keywords:hispanic languages and literatures
Date of Publication:09/29/2006