Sexual textualities: essays on queer/ing Latin American writing

Abstract

Sexual Textualities: Essays on Queer/ing Latin-American Writing. By David William Foster. Austin: U of Texas P, 1997. xii+ 180 pages. Long recognized as a major contributor to the development of a body of queer theory applicable to Latin American cultures, David William Foster has attempted to synthesize several areas of this expanding field in his recent book. He recognizes at the outset that culturally laden concepts of homosexuality or gay identity are the products of modernizing scientific discourses and economic circumstances particular to the United States and Europe, and have a limited or problematic applicability in the context of Latin America. paucity of queer studies on major literary figures such as Virgilio Pinera and Luis Rafael Sanchez, Foster suggests, may be attributable to the lack of appropriate tools for excavating diverse gay sensibilities. Conversely, the Latin American identification of homosexuality with a supposedly fixed passive or role has traditionally masked not only the social dimensions of homosexuality, but the underlying denigration of the feminine in society as a whole. Foster also points out that literary descriptions of alternative sexuality in the Latin American context are predominantly political in nature, reflecting the resistance of the individual to patriarchal constructs such as dictatorship. Finally, traditional definitions of homosexuality falsely reduce the gamut of recognized sexualities, leaving no space for identities such as that of the Chicana lesbian community. acknowledgment that Anglo queer theory is insufficient to the task of analyzing Latin American texts sets the stage for Foster to propose alternative methods of exegesis. His first chapter sets forth a canon of gay-marked Latin American writers from Manuel Puig to Reinaldo Arenas to Brazil's Glauco Mattoso. second examines the uses of the Evita legend in the context of gay and lesbian reactions to macho authoritarianism, and traces Juan Sebreli's construction and subsequent repudiation of Eva Peron as operatic hagiography. Chapter 3, entitled The Case for Feminine Pornography in Latin America, appeared originally in Foster and Reis' 1996 anthology Bodies and Biases: Sexualities in Hispanic Cultures and Literatures (U of Minnesota P). This chapter goes beyond gay and lesbian-marked texts, examining the work of Hilda Hirst, Mayra Montero, and others as challenges to both heterosexist (phallic) tyranny and traditional feminist responses. To this reader's frustration, Foster avoids the essential question of whether pornography is literature by focusing on texts that are nominally pornographic, but actually privilege narrative and metatextual implications over the strictly genital encounter. …