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Expressing Desire, Expressing Death: Antón Lopo's Pronomes and Queer Galician Poetry

2006; Routledge; Volume: 7; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14636200600811110

1469-9818

Timothy McGovern,

Spanish Literature and Culture Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Frateschi Vieira's “Introduction” to the collection is found on an untitled first page of the printed book. 2. Al Berto's own poetry strongly resembles Lopo's works for their repeated use of the images of the male lovers awaking in bed after a night of sex, and also the recurring use of the image of semen to suggest the sexual act. 3. This citation is from the on-line version of the journal and does not contain continuous page numbers. 4. To imagine that homophobia no longer plays an active role in the lives of homosexuals, after Spain's sexual revolution, is to fail to imagine the reaction of parents, schoolmates, and co-workers when any homosexual, bisexual, or transgender person “comes out.” While Spanish society would appear to tolerate homosexuality on an official level, psychologists John Wayne Plasek and Janicemarie Allard in their article “Misconceptions of Homophobia” have studied just this question, that of society's tolerance (which is actually a passive condemnation) of homosexuality. They conclude that: “tolerance is distinguished from acceptance on the basis of the superior status from which the former is extended and the equal status of the latter” (30). 5. Aliaga and Vicente's definition and use of the term “queer” does not differ greatly from Doty's: A la hora de formular demandas y exigencies una organización gay española evitará normalmente su empleo, pues no es percebida como respetable. Compárase lo dicho con el fenómeno de queer (significa “raro”, “diferente”, “sospechoso”, “marica”; tambíén lo adoptan algunas bolleras) en el ámbito anglosajón, un vocablo, de múltiples y cambiantes acepciones (como corresponde a una cultura gay y lésbica en continua ebullición) que se aplica a nuevas identidades sexuales transgresoras con la heteronorma. El término queer ha cobrado nueva vida con un sesgo reivindicativo, con el surgimiento en Nueva York, al principio de los noventa, de Queer Nation, un grupo de gays que organizaban patrullas, para prevenir los ataques de pandillas o bandas de homófobos, agresores que se ceban en los gays, cuyo equivalente en España serían las bandas de rapadas de extrema derecha. (46) 6. In order to avoid taking Ellis's quote out of context, he also contends that Spanish gay/lesbian autobiography fails in its attempts. He then moves to a discussion of queer writing as opposed to gay/lesbian writing: “In contrast to lesbian/gay autobiography, queer autobiography makes explicit the second phase of homographesis through its stress on the ‘difference from difference.’ It neither affirms nor denies gay and lesbian identities but endeavors to destabilize all sexual and gender identities by allowing them to free-float across the hetero/homo and masculine/feminine binary divides” (14). 7. Likewise, feminist critics have analyzed the strategies through which female Galician poets have challenged the traditional practices that have relegated women, and women's writing, to a second-tier status. Critic Helena González Fernández, in her article “1994, tempos de medrío e boa saúde na poesía” highlights the poetry of writers Chus Pato, Isolda Santiago, and Ana Romaní, among others, and the manner in which their works challenge sexist notions concerning women's writing: “É a poesía da outredade, empanada na reapropiación de mitos e tópicos que só foron explotados desde o punto de vista masculino, e, sobre todo, fuxir desa poesía sentimentalista e testemuñal que pexa a tradición literaria feminina. É poesía escrita para a conciencia e a rebelión, co obxectivo de construir un discurso novo, combatente, e mesmo subversivo/It is the poetry of otherness, dedicated to the re-appropriation of myths and topics that were only exploited from a masculine point of view and, above all, the rejection of sentimental and testimonial poetry that has haunted the feminine literary tradition. It is a poetry written for a new consciousness and for rebellion, with the objective of constructing a new discourse, a combative one, at the same time subversive” (170). 8. Naming plays a major role in the narratives of contemporary gay male narrators in both Spain and Portugal, and in the following contemporary novel's characters choose new names for their lovers and for themselves in order to express the “other” identity, or their “difference,” or to hide their identities and to adopt dual lives (gay and straight): Al Berto's Lunário (1997), Guilherme de Melo's O Que Houver de Morrer (1989), Terenci Moix's Món Mascle (1970), among others. Likewise, the transgender characters of Eduardo Mendicutti's novels Yo no tengo la culpa de haber nacido tan sexy (1997) and Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera (1988) choose new names to fit the gender identities that they adopt. 9. The importance of expressing a queer sexual identity (one that defies the heteronormative traditions that marginalized, punished, and clearly impaired the production of homosexuals) in Galician is important in the context of post-Franco freedom of expression and the evolution of a new Galician-language reading public. Critic Henrique Monteagudo Romero, in his article “Dez anos de poesía galega: 1975-1985,” underscores how a new reading public, and a new generation of poets, demanded new forms of expression: “Concrétase a anchéase un público lector cada vez máis sabedor e esixente, consolídanse, esténdense e diversifícanse os gustos, e tras eles os centros de creación, as canles de comunicación e distribución/ A more discerning reading public arrises and grows, and thus new tastes, and because of them new centers for creation, and channels of communication and distribution are developed” (269). 10. The queer readings of gaps or silences in texts has been postulated by Michel Foucault in the first volume of The History of Sexuality thus: There is no binary division to be made between what one says and what one does not say; we must determine the different ways of not saying such things, how those who can and those who cannot speak of them are distributed, which type of discourse is authorized, or which form of discretion is required in either case. There is not one but many silences, and they are an integral part of the strategies that underlie and permeate discourses. (27) It is precisely the search for queer silences that homosexual youth employ when they undertake to formulate a queer identity in a predominately heterosexist society. They must look for models (such as Wilde) and then read the queerness into the works. It is for this reason that the international camp canon includes many “straight” narratives, but those selected may be read as queer through intuition. Likewise, if the camp aesthetic defies an exact definition, Esther Newton's essay “Role Models” certainly provides useful characteristics for the uninitiated: While camp is in the eye of the homosexual beholder, it is assumed that there is an underlying unity of perspective among homosexuals that gives any particular campy thing its special flavor. It is possible to discern strong themes in any particular campy thing or event. The three that seemed most recurrent and characteristic to me were incongruity, theatricality, and humor. All three are intimately related to the homosexual situation and strategy. Incongruity is the subject matter of camp, theatricality its style, and humor its strategy. (103) 11. The use of hyperbolic female voices to express the frustrated intentions and expressions of gay males is one of the characteristics of gay fiction, both in Spain and elsewhere. One need only look to George Cukor's film The Women (1939), Terenci Moix's “women's” novels such as Mujercísimas (1995), Eduardo Mendicutti's novels, such as Una mala noche la tiene cualquiera (1988), or almost any of Pedro Almodóvar's films to discover examples of cross-gender identification (albeit through histrionic heroines) in gay art. It is logical to assume that Lopo shares this same intention, in light of his clear goal of producing characteristically queer works.