Identidad híbrida y andrógina y el desarrollo latinoamericano en los sesentas: dos respuestas literarias

Abstract

Focusing on the apprenticeship of adolescent characters in José Lezama Lima's novel Paradiso (Cuba, 1966) and Clarice Lispector' short story A mensagem (Brazil, 1964), this article reads comparatively and from an interdisciplinary perspective that androgyny and hybridism play a significant role in Latin American cultural debate on identity. Within the time frame of the sixties and through two highly recognized examples such as Cuba and Brazil, this article explores particularly the relationship between those narratives and one of the most noteworthy social discourse of the period, the “development.” In this perspective, the adolescent character represents symbolically the future of a nation and “development” is read as a symbolic narrative of the apprenticeship of nations. The result of this relationship reflects problematic social negotiations as well as challenging disruptions based on androgyny and hybridism as “fluctuations of gender” and their role in the development.