El imperativo heterosexual y sus consecuencias en Así que pasen cinco años de García Lorca

Abstract

This article argues for a re-reading of one of Garcia Lorca’s most complex plays, Asi que pasen cinco anos in the light of recent theoretical work on sexual categories and social identity. It suggests, contrary to what Lorca portends to do in his more conventional tragedies about sexual repression and institutionalized life, that Asi que pasen cinco anos offers a powerful defense of heterosexuality and marriage within the matrix of family life. This is done at the expense of a sublimated homosexuality that the protagonist disavows. Drawing from Freudian psychoanalytic theories and other contemporary, groundbreaking theorists on gender and sexuality, such as Foucault, Adrienne Rich and Judith Butler, the article argues against a natural and ‘essential’ notion of heterosexuality, in favor of a biologically fixed but culturally presupposed sexual identity that is imposed onto the psyche of a more authentic ‘other’ whose existence is disavowed. In this respect, the article posits this play as partaking of the conflict between nature and civilization that informs much of what Lorca wrote.