Fantasy as Identity: Beyond Foundational Narratives in Lourdes Casal

Abstract

This essay analyzes queer and womanist perspectives in the literary work of Afro-Chinese Cuban social scientist and literary scholar Lourdes Casal (1938–1981) to interrogate prevalent definitions of insular and diasporic Cuban identities in the 1970s and 1980s. Casal's literary discourse circumvents foundational fictions of the white and mulatto creole nationalist imaginaries in the Hispanic Caribbean by using fantasy as an alternative script to reimagine Cuban identity. Her narrative and poetry explore the limits of mestizaje and mulataje as well as of notions of virility and heteronormativity, as powerful scripts in Latin American, Caribbean and Cuban nationalist and cultural discourses. Casal also takes advantage of history and literature in her narrative and poetic works to reveal the diasporic dimensions of identity that are visible but were still un-readable within official Cuban nationalist discourses of her time. This essay proposes a close-reading of a short story—"Los fundadores: Alfonso"—and her well-known poem "Para Ana Veldford" as examples of Casal's alternative definition of cubanía. Taking advantage of her interdisciplinary training as well as her own racialized unreadability, I conclude this essay arguing that Casal used her fiction to fantasize more complex Caribbean and Cuban identities.