Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Q u e e r i ng Pa r a di g m s V
Second, it is a volume that blends theoretical debates with policy
praxis, filling a gap that often tends to undermine the reach of either
side at play. Third, its topic is unique, as sexual politics are put in
direct dialogue with post-colonial debates. Fourth, the book brings
to the forefront voices from the Global South/non-core to redefine
a field that has been largely framed and conceptualized in the Global
North/core.
Q u e e r i ng Pa r a dig m s V
Second, it is a volume that blends theoretical debates with policy
praxis, filling a gap that often tends to undermine the reach of either
side at play. Third, its topic is unique, as sexual politics are put in
direct dialogue with post-colonial debates. Fourth, the book brings
to the forefront voices from the Global South/non-core to redefine
a field that has been largely framed and conceptualized in the Global
North/core.
Series Editor
B. Scherer, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
Peter Lang
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Queeri ng Paradigm s V
Q u e e r i n g Na r r at i v e s of Mo d e r n i t y
Peter Lang
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche National
bibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
issn 2235-5367
isbn 978-3-0343-1924-9 (print)
isbn 978-3-0353-0768-9 (eBook)
Printed in Germany
Contents
Acknowledgementsxiii
Marcelo Aguirre
Inauguración, Quinta Conferencia Internacional de
Paradigmas Queer ‘Narrativas Queer de la modernidad’ 19
Eduardo Carrera
Sitios de memoria: tres acciones artísticas en la ciudad de Quito 43
Nikita Dhawan
Homonationalism and state-phobia: The postcolonial
predicament of queering modernities 51
vi
Sonia Corrêa
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a
‘Latin American’ lens 69
Momin Rahman
Querying the equation of sexual diversity with modernity:
Towards a homocolonialist test 91
Lia La Novia
Puede besar a la novia: la experiencia de la transición de
género como un encuentro pedagógico, afectivo y politico 157
Gracia Trujillo
¿Y tú te defines como queer? Sobre genealogías situadas,
debates y resistencias queer/cuir y transfeministas en el
Sur (de Europa) 175
Elizabeth Vásquez
‘Mi género en mi cédula’: un concepto nuevo por una puerta vieja 197
vii
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
Abolición del pato: Discourses of Puerto Rican
queer modernity and performance 271
POST-SCRIPT 317
Bee Scherer
Queer scholars, activists, critics and caretakers: Notes on the
genealogy, impact and aspiration of Queering Paradigms 319
Index333
Amy Lind and Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal
Foreword
1 We use the term ‘greater global South’ to include not only the non-aligned, develop-
ing nations, formally known as the ‘Third World’ and now labeled the ‘global South,’
but also an assemblage of nations and regions within the so-called developed/First
World/global North, that share similar economic and social indicators as those used
to qualify countries and regions conventionally understood as belonging, in geopo-
litical and socioeconomic terms, to the global South. In a nutshell, by using the term
‘greater global South’ and not just ‘global South,’ we wish to highlight the porosity
and the overlap when it comes to the growing gap between and within North and
South, as well as to question the North-South divide in modernization thought/
theory and signify how inequalities and capital accumulation cross national and
regional boundaries.
x Amy Lind and Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal
emanate from regions other than the United States and Western/Northern
Europe? How can we de facto decolonize queerness itself ? Contributors to
this volume address these questions through their own engagements with
queer studies, cultural production and activism.
We both attended QP5 and were struck by the wide range of debates
that took place there and the presence of new voices, especially from indi-
viduals who had traveled from other countries in Latin America and the
Caribbean. Discussions on queer studies signaled a clear tension around
the usage and reading of canonical Northern queer studies texts such as the
work of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault, J. Halberstam or Beatriz Preciado,
and the kinds of knowledge production that emanate from anti-normative
epistemological and political projects in the greater global South. While
some speakers argued that the term ‘queer’ is itself a Western/Northern
imposition, others considered the nuanced ways in which critiques of nor-
mativity, including but not limited to expressions of gender, racial, sexual
and class identities that challenge middle-class, urban, Eurocentric notions
of normative identity and respectability, are themselves examples of ‘queer-
ing’ narratives of modernity insofar as they challenge the liberal, colonial
foundation of contemporary concepts of democracy, nation, community,
identity, and economy. Yet others think of ‘queer’ as an act of trastocar,
of disrupting or overthrowing the paradigmatic narratives of modernity,
to turn them on their head, upside down, spin and shatter them it into
multiple alphabets in order to create new narratives, new epistemologies
of being in and with the world, always contracorriente, against the grain,
of patriarchal reasoning and logic.
As part of an ongoing Queering Paradigms project, one that began in
2009 and whose main objective is to challenge ‘the hetero-homonormative
and gender binarist assumptions of any given academic discourse [and, we
may add, of other and multiple forms of cultural expressions and activism],’
this volume is a felicitous intervention that not only questions knowledge
but creates it by means of incisive critical inquiries into the burgeoning areas
of queer and post/decolonial studies in the global South. And while much
remains to be done, grapple with, disrupt, we see the present collections
of essays as an inspirational effort to continue and expand a conversation
that is far from being over.
Acknowledgements
por el estado ‘moderno’. The Kichwa word pacha comprises both the femi-
nine and the masculine. It also describes both time and space, collapsing
the ‘here’ into the ‘now’ to make clear that time and space are imbricate in
one single concept. Space is embedded in temporality; location determines
time. Kichwa, la lingua franca of los Andes, situates time. Pacha is the
cosmos, it also indicates the hour, as in ‘kimsa pacha’ (three pm). Neither
queerness or Idigenous temporalities are new. Rather they are silenced and
unheard. In Quito, for instance, an art/activist collective is exploring the
relation between temporality and sexuality. La Pachaqueer describes itself
as an espacio libre de arte that pushes the boundaries of debates across time
and space. Pachaqueer confronts colonial binaries through performances
constructed around the depth and presence of racialized, gendered and
sexualized bodies.
This book has the ambition to de-homogenize time. It has been con-
ceived as an active/ist performance of multiple queer methodologies – blur-
ring borders and engaging linguistic desbordes. This book invites new ways
of thinking lo cuir desde varios sures. The shape it has taken is academic but
also political. What have we done to the politics of sexuality? What are the
limits we are facing as activists, scholars and artists? The contributors to
this volume explore what is traversing the cuir debate en los muchos sures,
que no son solo geográficos pero también políticos: los sures del norte y
los sures de adentro, los sures al norte y al sur del Ecuador.
example, Ecuador’s Constitution is among those few in the world that favors
gender identity as a right. Nevertheless, it seems that nation-states as they
exist today can recognize LGBT rights and at the same time leave untouched
the normative and material bases – as well as the social representation – of
the family (nuclear or not) as the primary and natural unit of all societies.
We write bajo la euforia de la aprobación en Junio 2015 de legalizar
el matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo por la Corte Suprema de los
Estados Unidos en ‘all 50 states’, pues encontró que la prohibición del
matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo viola su Constitución. We also
write bajo la esperanza de un Ecuador que ha retomado su voz en las voces
de miles de ecuatorianos, ecuatorianas y personas que residen en Ecuador
que han retomado su derecho a la protesta ante la visita del Papa Francisco.
Escribimos también desde lo que puede ser leído como una ‘falsa’? sensación
de libertad de opinión al hacerlo desde otras geografías parte de nuestros
propios cotidianos y sures en los nortes. Escribimos a una semana y media
del crimen de odio perpetrado por un joven estadunidense blanco contra
nueve personas en una Iglesia histórica afroamericana, y ello a la luz del
desplazamiento de miles de haitianos en República Dominicana y el cierre
de Europa contra refugiados escapando Syria. Sin buscar y más bien siendo
críticas de las falsas dicotomías civilización/barbarie, nos reconocemos
como voces que pertenecen a la vez al norte e al sur y comparten vida en
uno y otro. Sentimos la mordaza que hoy prohíbe disentir de los discursos
oficialistas proclamados como la única verdad en Ecuador, sentimos la
vigilancia moral en la materialidad de nuestros cuerpos and we are subject
to systematic global surveillance justified as anti-terrorism measure. We
shall not be silenced.
This reflexión took every and each of the authors in this book to trayec-
torias Norte – Sur. Disputes over the conceptualization, theorizing and
treatment of gender and sexuality have been at the core of feminist and
queer studies. At the same time, political scenarios and discourses in con-
temporary Latin America show how a different type of sexual and gender
politics being produced, circulated and represented. The book sheds light
on potential new directions emerging out of and at these intersections.
It signals how particular racial, ethnic, and (post)(neo)colonial histories
in Ecuador are embedded in current trends around the normalization of
10 Manuela Lavinas Picq and Maria Amelia Viteri
desde los bordes nacionales, desde los bordes del privilegio, desde los bordes
de la academia, el arte y el activismo. Estos bordes porosos impulsan un
continuo cuestionamiento académico que empieza por el cuerpo y que se
convierte en formas de hacer teoría. Retomamos aquí el concepto de ‘teoría
baja’ conforme lo utiliza Jack Halberstam desde su original gramsciano
como una forma de escribir y pensar que opera a partir de una multiplici-
dad de niveles simultáneos. Lo que se considera como ‘teoría baja, teoría
menor’ corre el riesgo de no ser tomada seriamente por su propia academia,
conforme sucedió tanto en el Coloquio Queer como en el Congreso QP5
echoing Halberstam’s discussion on the queer art of failure.
Trastocar was inspired precisely by those bordes as in des-bordes (Viteri
2014) where des – as a prefix in Spanish – undoes analytical references
around gender and sexuality. Through these desbordes, different borders are
constructed as they are undone, redefining new ways of belonging beyond
the normative and beyond traditional nation-state defined terms (legal
citizenship for instance). Trastocar as an act, as beautifully discussed by
Lind and Martínez-Echazábal in our current book’s prologue, also brings
to mind the image of tocar, as in affect, as in the act of impacting and
changing through different levels of affection. This tocar cuir drastically
departs from the way love has been (mis)used by governments in Venezuela,
Nicaragua and Ecuador, to call for a cohersive and conventionally religious
act of supporting certain political ideologies. The ‘new normal’ under these
governments is built through ‘infinito amor’ which translates into ‘gente
de buen corazón, respetuosa’3 to refer to those that comply (bend) without
questioning. Trastocar was also inspired by resentir (Falconí, Castellanos
& Viteri 2014) a book project which sought to volver a sentir, claiming at
the same time a space on the knowledge-production hierarchy.
Algunas de las preguntas de fondo que exploramos en esta búsqueda
de la idea de modernidad actual en torno a lo que se entiende por progreso
nos lleva nuevamente a las formas de circulación del conocimiento y sus
jerarquías, nos obligan a pensar en la relación entre discursos de progreso
y, por ejemplo, áreas de estudio que se consideran como acordes a esos
Chapters overview
sexualities in modernity. Josi Tikuna and Manuela Picq take the question
of sexual modernity to Amazonia. They juxtapose international expressions
of sexual diversity like Gay Pride celebrations with Tikuna homo-affective
families to reveal symbols of modernity in unexpected places. They shed
light on global dynamics of sexuality in peripheries where they tend to be
overlooked, showing how the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ permanently interact
with and redefine each other. They think Indigenous queerness to desta-
bilize conventional ideas of what political modernity is made of and why
it cannot be taken to signify a western political core. Carlos Alberto Leal
Reyes explores gender deconstructions in rural spaces through the queer
bodies of muxes in the Zapotec town of Juchitán, Mexico. Having been
named as a third sex in the anthropological literature, muxes have prestige
in the family and the community revealing a distinctive cultural construct.
Reyes engages trans-disciplinary perspectives to chart how muxes experi-
ences open the possibility of queering lifestyles in ways that go beyond
limits determined by modernity.
Part 3 explores a diversity of activisms in various global souths. Lía La
Novia describes her artistic performance on how her own gender transition
has meant a pedagogical encounter in Mexico. Her textual/visual family
album invites the reader to dialogue with memories, imagination, and
emotions of a traditional Mexican fiesta turned into a collective experience
about transgender artistic practices. Gracia Trujillo offers situated genealo-
gies of queer activism from and about southern Europe. She writes about
resistance in the context of the Spanish state, exploring what it means to
self-identify as queer and to queer social protests. Her research on queer
and trans-feminist politics blends with her activism as a co-founder of the
Asamblea Transmaricabollo de Sol. Her work nurtures dialogues with Latin
America and challenges theoretical debates largely dominated by Anglo-
Saxon approaches. Elizabeth Vásquez focuses on sex change in civil registers
through Ecuador’s campaign ‘my gender on my ID.’ She contrasts the coun-
try’s civil law strategy with international approaches focused on human rights,
debating the possibility to subvert from within. She differentiates sex and
gender in civil law as she explores Ecuadoran demands for ‘sex’ to be replace
by ‘gender’ on identificantion cards through her own intimate activist expe-
rience. Gabriela Arguedas shows extreme forms of modernity oppressing
16 Manuela Lavinas Picq and Maria Amelia Viteri
References
Agradecimientos
En las últimas décadas del siglo XX, una fracción del arte se convirtió en el
campo de batallas sociales, como reacción ante la crisis del VIH, los debates
de salud pública, el activismo de las comunidades GLBTI, entre otros con-
flictos que posicionaron al cuerpo en el centro de una discusión sobre las
normas de género, la escritura de la historia, el control de la sexualidad, la
representación del otro, el pensamiento poscolonial … Dentro de esos marcos,
permeables y fortalecidos siempre por el pensamiento crítico, la exhibición El
cuerpo queer, la construcción de la memoria (Arte Actual – FLACSO, 2013)
abre una discusión sobre la representación histórica y la representación de
los sujetos, sostenida en las obras de dos grandes artistas contemporáneos:
Zanele Muholi (Durban, 1972)1 y Carlos Motta (Bogotá, 1978)2.
Faces and Phases, de Muholi, y Nefandus, de Motta, se expusieron como
dos muestras individuales, que entran en diálogo desde una misma zona
de disidencia, pues los dos discuten los guiones que construyen la historia,
cuestionan políticas de representación e identidad y proponen pensar la
relación del sujeto con su cuerpo y ese cuerpo en relación con los otros.
En las obras –y las vidas– de ambos artistas resuenan constantemente estas
palabras escritas por Motta:
Queer art and artists have used strategies of denormalization and resistance to rupture
systems of representation—to self-represent, dissent, experiment, construct fantasy,
engage in social commentary, and confront power structures. Art has enabled queers
to claim our place, to decolonize our bodies, to reimagine our desires, and to consti-
tute ourselves as a political force. Breaking the tyranny of silence surrounding our
experience of sexuality and gender in society has been a way of owning our presence
as citizens of democracy. (Motta 2013)
3 Entre los autores que analizan esos modos de trabajo artístico están Hal Foster, Mark
Godfrey, Anna María Guasch, entre otros.
24 Anamaría Garzón Mantilla
Faces express the person, and Phases signify the transition from one stage of sexuality
or gender expression and experience to another. Faces is also about the face-to-face
confrontation between myself as the photographer/activist and the many lesbians,
women and transmen I have interacted with from different places. Photographs in
this series traverse spaces from Gauteng and Cape Town to London and Toronto,
and include the townships of Alexandra, Soweto, Vosloorus, Khayelitsha, Gugulethu,
Katlehong and Kagiso (…)
The viewer is invited to contemplate questions such as: what does an African les-
bian look like? Is there a lesbian aesthetic or do we express our gendered, racialised
and classed selves in rich and diverse ways? Is this lesbian more ‘authentic’ than that
lesbian because she wears a tie and the other does not? Is this a man or a woman? Is
this a transman? Can you identify a rape survivor by the clothes she wears? (Muholi)
Muholi, que trabajó como peluquera antes de ser artista, escucha a las
mujeres y las peina con un profundo amor y respeto, antes de retratarlas.
Las fotos se apropian del formato de retrato conocido en la pintura y a la
vez desafían la norma establecida por la fotografía de archivo estudiada
por Allan Sekula en ‘El cuerpo y el archivo’, en 1986, pues los retratos de
Zanele Muholi no funcionan para crear estereotipos ni para calzar en esta-
dísticas que eliminan la individualidad. Lo contrario: sirven para mostrar
que encasillar es una tarea vana e imposible. Así, las miradas y los rostros de
Faces and Phases son un ejército que combate el olvido y recuerda los usos
del archivo descritos por Okwui Enwezor en el catálogo de su exhibición
Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art (International
Center of Photography, Nueva York, 2008), ‘the photograph becomes
the sovereign analogue of identity, memory, and history, joining past and
present, virtual and real, thus giving the photographic document the aura
of an anthropological artifact and the authority of a social instrument.’
(Enwezor 2008: 13).
Las fotografías de Zanele Muholi nos convierten en testigos de un
tiempo y de una memoria que no alcanzamos a comprender por completo,
pues su intimidad se mantiene a salvo, la fotógrafa nos entrega sus imágenes,
pero no sus secretos. Sabemos que muchas han sufrido actos violentos, pero
Zanele Muholi se encarga de no exponerlas, de evitar que sean estadísticas,
que sean encasilladas. Pero esto no significa que su actitud sea pasiva, pues
sus rostros serenos, expuestos por cientos, nos rodean y dan un vuelco a la
26 Anamaría Garzón Mantilla
relación habitual del observador que subordina a la obra que mira, pues
devuelven la mirada, interpelan a quien las mira, son ellas quienes nos lanzan
preguntas, quienes cuestionan nuestra posición de observadores pasivos y
piden que su memoria y sus vidas sean honradas. Poderosas, suman bravura
y gravitas. Recuerdan a Lévinas y cómo el reconocimiento del rostro del
otro nos impone una responsabilidad ética, un compromiso con nuestra
propia humanidad.
Con sus fotografías, Zanele Muholi escribe la historia de nuestro
tiempo y hace énfasis en un imperativo de transformaciones. ‘For history
has always been a critique of social narratives and, in this sense, a rectifica-
tion of our common memory. Every documentary revolution lies along
this same trajectory’, escribe Paul Ricoeur (2006: 69), y mientras Zanele
Muholi se encuentra entre quienes cuestionan las narrativas sociales del
presente, Carlos Motta tiende un puente hacia el pasado y desde la crítica a
la historia Precolombina y Colonial, abre una serie de preguntas que sirven
para pensar cómo vamos a resolver el futuro:
Carlos Motta, La visión de los vencidos (The Defeated), 2013. Cortesía del artista.
III
La es una historia de silencios
subordina el cuerpo
reduce el deseo a cenizas
IV
La expresión de lo homoerótico fue también
señalada por cronistas, europeos colonos
y misioneros evangelizadores saturados de fé
y de la moralidad de un dios occidental.
práctica, es una acción, la historia es política en el sentido literal del término. La tarea
del historiador benjaminiano no será la de recordar para reconstruir el pasado, sino
la de construir el presente a partir del pasado.6
Referencias
León Sierra: Eso ocurre por una homofobia internalizada, creo yo.
Es un armario sofisticado. Hay un montón de pensadores, artistas, que
pueden llegar a ser homosexuales o no por sus prácticas. Yo no estoy ahí
para juzgarlos, pero sus prácticas artísticas dejan entre ver una cercanía con
las practicas homoeróticas, pero hay una capacidad de esquivar la asunción
de su sujeto político porque devenir artistas homosexuales o pensadores
homosexuales es producir dentro de un contexto cultural. Es decir, lo que
produce su obra se reduciría a un nicho de lo gay que aparte de ellos estar
de acuerdo o no de acuerdo políticamente: vende menos, vende exclusiva-
mente un lugar entre un nicho cultural.
Anamaría Garzón: Pero creo que los temas del cuerpo, en general, no
llegan a ser un gran tema de discusión ni un campo de transgresión habi-
tual dentro del campo del arte local, y adicionalmente se niega un tipo de
visibilización para no ser encasillado, para no tener una toma de postura
pública, que es otra forma de encerrarse y aceptar otro tipo de normativas
y de control sobre el cuerpo.
María Amelia Viteri: Ahora, ¿en este contexto hay arte gay? ¿Los que
hacen trabajo gay más allá de que se auto identifiquen como gays, tengan
practicas homoeróticas u otras, deciden hacer una separación entre los que
es arte y lo que es arte ‘gay’? Porque lo que es arte gay les sitúa en un lugar
precario, si quieres desvalorizado
necesidad que la obra tenga un mas allá, un contenido, una relación, pero
en específica relación a las comunidades sexo genéricas en un país de los
márgenes del capital como es el Ecuador, creo que es muy importante la
politización de los artistas y de los artistas de las diversidades sexuales y
creo que eso va a ser paradigmático. Ricardo, con el acompañamiento de
la Fundación Kimirina, le ha propuesto a la Fundación Museos, una resi-
dencia artística que se llama ‘Positiva’, para hablar del cuerpo contracultu-
ral donde cierto número de artistas de la región puedan dialogar con las
comunidades politizadas, con las veintiséis organizaciones que han firmado
la agenda de salud por ejemplo. Este va a ser un bastión importante del arte
contemporáneo aquí en el Ecuador.
María Amelia Viteri: ¿Y qué hay de los heteros? Estoy pensando, entre
comillas ‘heteros’, en personas que han sido constituidas en el ambiente del
arte como heteros y con un arte hetero que empiezan a explorar cuerpos
queer, como Marcelo Aguirre en su última obra.
León Sierra: A inicios de los años 80, Jorge Mateus volvió de España,
formado como actor de la Real Escuela de Arte Dramático y se encon-
tró con Bruno Pino y con Carlos Michelena e hicieron un proyecto muy
bueno, montaron Las criadas, de Jean Genet, en la calle. Entonces yo creo
que las reflexiones de cuerpos que no se declaran heterosexuales eran muy
vanguardista en esa época y creo que deberíamos empezar a mirar un poco
en relación a eso, es decir, no tenemos que volver a plantearlas, empezar
desde cero. Muy pocas personas hablan de esas obras y es la pena de las artes
vivas, pues se pierden, no siempre hay registro.
Eduardo Carrera
víctimas, memorias que esperan de la justicia una reparación del daño que
sufrieron; memorias de la propia comunidad o memorias del Estado; juntas
pueden interpretarse como un solemne y melancólico ritual de duelo:
Referencias
The past decades have been ones of unprecedented sociocultural and legal
gains for queer politics, including the decriminalization of antisodomy
laws as well as the recognition of the human rights of sexual minorities
internationally. But these achievements have been accompanied by a severe
critique of queer racism, homonationalism and of the imperialist agenda of
global gay politics (Massad 2007, Puar 2007). The employment of gender
and sexuality as alibis for legitimizing violence against (religious) minorities
within Europe as well as military interventions in the non-Western world
has opened up fundamental questions regarding the future of feminism
and of queer emancipatory politics. Even as I support the critique of the
complicities of Western queer politics in neoliberal, imperial discourses
and condemn the instrumentalization of sexual freedom as a means to
sanction and harass minorities in the West as well as to stigmatize entire
populations in the global South as repressive and backward, I am also
extremely concerned and troubled by the state-phobia that plagues anti-
homonationalism politics. The sole focus on queer racism and homona-
tionalism in the global North makes it difficult to address homophobic
and heteronormative practices and structures in diasporic communities
and the postcolonial world. In contrast to limiting postcolonial queer
critique to anti-homonationalism, I plead for a more complex, multidirec-
tional politics that is directed at coercive practices across the postcolonial
divide. Thus, anti-imperialist and antiracist critique of queer politics must
be accompanied by a critique of ‘reproductive heteronormativity’ within
postcolonial contexts. One without the other reinforces violent mecha-
nisms of oppression. The present essay is an attempt to negotiate these
52 Nikita Dhawan
1 It is important to emphasize that the Western media’s obsession with and “concern”
for Iranian queers cannot be disentangled from Euro-American geopolitical interests
in that region. At the same time, the medicalization and pathologization of non-
normative sexualities is not limited to the global North. After Thailand, the Iranian
state pays for more sex-change operations than any other country. This is not an
antiheteronormative politics; rather, it is to promote the concordance between the
gender one performs and the sex one embodies.
56 Nikita Dhawan
2 Peter Tatchell and outrage! have been particularly criticized by postcolonial queer
scholars. Refer to Feminist Legal Studies 19, no. 2 (August 2011).
Homonationalism and state-phobia 57
marriages are binational and where queers of color acquire citizenship privi-
leges through marriage. In fact, South Africa does not have a single entry
in her book, which is surprising, considering it is a postcolonial country
with one of the most progressive constitutions in the world with regard
to queer equality, even as there is the growing trend of ‘corrective rapes’
(sometimes under supervision by members of their families or local com-
munities) and violence against black lesbians. With the primary focus on
‘Gay International’ and Western ‘homonationalism,’ there is the risk of over-
looking the well-funded campaigns in postcolonial countries by Western
‘profamily’ religious organizations to hinder progressive legislation or even
to introduce coercive ones. The (re-)criminalization of homosexuality in
Uganda, Nigeria, and India with homophobic sentiments whipped up by
foreign evangelical groups, the introduction of American style defense
of marriage act in countries like Romania and the 2004 declaration of
the Doha international family institute, which brings together Christian
and Muslim civil society groups that reinforce normative ideas of family
and marriage, necessitates a more complex, multi-directional politics of
critique. Furthermore, sexuality is increasingly becoming a foreign policy
issue as demonstrated by the resurrection of cold war rhetoric in reponse
to Putin’s sexual politics in lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Another interesting issue is that although Puar focuses on the sexual
torture in Abu Ghraib, her main concern is the racial profiling of non-
normative migrant subjects in the global North. Thus, the Third World
falls even more deeply into shadow. Antiracist politics in the global North
are related to but are not continuous with the processes of decoloniza-
tion in the global South. In most countries of the global South, queer
activists and theorists are struggling for the constitutional recognition
of sexual rights, including same-sex marriage, as an important aspect of
sexual justice, even as these rights are rejected by radical queer theorists,
mostly located in the global North, as politics of appeasement. And yet,
even if the law does not guarantee justice, one cannot not want rights.
Thus, arguments against the legal recognition of nonnormative sexual
practices, put forth as being ‘commonplace’ concerns for assimilation in a
‘corrupt mainstream,’ need to historicize and contextualize these struggles,
whereby there are no ‘natural’ alliances between queer politics (whether
62 Nikita Dhawan
black or white) located in the global North and in the global South on the
issue of sexual justice. In contrast to victimizing or celebrating queers of
color, it is imperative to acknowledge complicities in hegemonic orders,
instead of perceiving them as a matter of inconvenience. Taking inspira-
tion from Spivak, I would argue against any romantic models of agency
and am skeptical of ‘cheap urban radicalism’ (2007: 175) that sells itself as
anti-neocolonial resistance. There is a certain monopolization of agency
by those who, with First World citizenships and hard currency, can afford
to reject ‘pragmatic’ politics in favor of more ‘radical’ interventions in the
face of queer imperialism.
State-phobia
4 I am of course acutely aware of the hegemonic listening in the western media to the
“critique” of Islam by “native informants” like Irshad Manji and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. In
the past decade, victim narratives have become bestsellers all across the global North,
which claims to be concerned about the “victimized” Third world woman while they
righteously support policies disenfranchising marginalized communities.
5 See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S1eEL8ElDo and http://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=6a0Dkn3SnWM.
64 Nikita Dhawan
liberal and left politics in the form of critique of securitization and repressive
apparatus. This translated for instance into uncritical solidarity with soviet
dissidents. Both amongst the liberals as well as amongst the left, the idea of
state as threat gained traction, particularly in the context of fear of atomic
war. Foucault problematizes the state-phobia of liberal as well as left politics,
in that they fail to distinguish between administrative state, welfare state,
bureaucratic state, fascist state and totalitarian state. He distances himself
from such an inflationary form of liberal and left state-phobia. In contrast
Foucault understands the state as ‘the mobile effect of a regime of multiple
governmentalities’ that overlap, but also contradict each other (2008: 77).
This dynamic and ambivalent function of the state is dangerously
ignored by scholars like Puar, whose critique of the state gravitates towards
state-phobia in that every attempt by queer individuals and groups to nego-
tiate with the state is denounced as homonationalism. One must bear in
mind that there is a very fine line between critique of the state and state-
phobia and anti-statism. The latter is marked by a deep distrust of state
institutions per se. As Foucault compellingly argues, state-phobia forms
a foundational premise for the emergence of neoliberal governmentality
and conflates critique of state and critique of domination, with the state
being characterized as the origin of all violence.
The challenge for postcolonial queer theory is to formulate critique
of the state and critique of hegemonic heteronormativity without repro-
ducing state-phobia. Finally liberal and left state-phobia is informed by a
Eurocentrism, in that a particular, specific European experience with fascism
is universalized thereby erasing different historical processes of state-forma-
tion and state-building in postcolonial contexts. Puar’s critique of USA, Israel
und India homogenizes very diverse anti-discrimination policies and laws
simply as politics of appeasement. This approach is risky in its simplicity.
Interestingly states like Saudi Arabia or Mauritania, where homosexual acts
are punishable with death penalty are spared in Puar’s writings. Moreover, she
equates the provisional decriminalization of same sex acts in India and invali-
dation of sodomy laws in USA as examples of homonationalism, discounting
the differences between two very different historical and regional contexts.
The two legal reforms are a result of complex social and legal struggles that
produce ambivalent and diverse effects, which are questionably disregarded.
Homonationalism and state-phobia 65
imperative for emancipatory queer politics in the global South. This is not a
plea for statism; rather, one must be aware of the dangers of the replacement
of state with non-state actors as motors of justice. Against this background,
the recent anti-statist stance within postcolonial queer scholarship is alarm-
ing, as it ignores the importance of the state for those citizens who do not
have access to transnational counterpublic spheres to address their grievances.
Decolonization, whether in USA, Israel or India, cannot be achieved
merely through a strategy of shaming the state. Rather in the Gramscian-
Spivakian sense, it is imperative to enable vulnerable disenfranchised indi-
viduals and groups to access the state (Dhawan 2013). Accordingly, instead
of a for or against position vis-à-vis the state, the more challenging question
is how to reconfigure the state, given that its institutions and policies are
the mobile effect of a regime of multiple governmentalities. Thus the chal-
lenge is how to pursue a non-statephobic queer politics that at the same
time neither rationalizes the biopolitical state project nor makes the queer
bodies governable. In postcolonial contexts, the state is like a pharmakon,
namely, both poison and medicine. Postcolonial queer politics must explore
strategies of converting poison into counterpoison (Spivak 2007: 71).
Herein the ambivalent function of the state must be addressed. As
Pharmakon, the inherent condradictions must be engaged with: Violence
and justice, ideology and emancipation, law and discipline. If, following
Foucault, the state has no stable essence, then it is marked by undecidability or
doubleness. The sole focus on the negative aspects of the Pharmakon, namely
the destructive and repressive traits, neutralizes and ignores the enabling
and empowering aspects. Thus postcolonial-queer-feminist politics must
transform poison into remedy and formulate critique of the state beyond
state-phobia. A challenging task, but anything else would be too risky!
References
1 These efforts have resulted in publications like SexPolitics: Reports from the Front
Lines (Sember, Parker and Petchesky, 2007), Sexuality, Health and Human Rights
(Corrêa, Petchesky and Parker, 2008) and, in particular, a series of three conversations
initiated by Sexuality Policy Watch published in the two volumes of Sexuality and
Politics: Dialogues from the Global South (Corrêa, de la Dehesa and Parker, 2014).
2 The outcomes of the SPW Latin American Dialogue, few of the articles published
in Resentir lo queer en America Latina – Diálogos desde/con el Cono Sur, but also the
writings of de la Dehesa (2010), Hiller (2012), Miskolci (2014), Corrales and Pecheny
(2011) among others.
70 Sonia Corrêa
the sharp contrast between the state-phobia of Euro- North American queer
theorizing, examined by Dhawan, and the marked state-centered features
of our own sexual politics in Latin America. Time and space constraints
limited my original ambitions. This commentary tentatively explores if the
‘Oriental other’ frame can precisely grasp ‘Latin American’ post-colonial
conditions and the dynamics at work in the regional sexual politics. Yet,
the two other potential pathways mentioned above will remain a horizon
of my disquieting.
Before moving into substance, I want to make an observation on the
semantics of this text. In the pages that follow, the terms ‘region/regional’
and ‘Latin America/n’ are kept between single quotation marks as to indi-
cate caution with regard to cross-country heterogeneities that these terms
conceal. But as I will also traverse analytical pathways that emphasize cross-
boundary forces and trends at work in regional landscapes, I must advise
the reader that it is not easy to find the common ground between these
two parameters. No less importantly, I favored ‘sexual politics’ over ‘queer
politics’ because this is the terminology I generally use in my writings. This
choice, however, also expresses my discomfort in defining contemporary
‘Latin American’ struggles for sexual justice as ‘queer politics’ tout court,
while recognizing that these endeavors comprise an expanding academic
field of queer theorizing as well as multiple terrains where the politics of
queering is actively engaged.
My point of departure
Semantic cartographies
3 The Communist countries in Europe were renamed ‘Eastern’ and analyses have been
produced emphasizing the Asian side of Russia that made it appear closer to China
than to the West.
72 Sonia Corrêa
4 This translated into the creation of the Non- Aligned Group in Belgrade in (1961)
and of the Group of 77 as the UN major negotiating block from the ‘South’, in 1965.
5 Interestingly, the continent was not named after the navigator Columbus, but after
the cartographer Amerigo Vespucci who travelled extensively along its coasts and
wrote many letters to European courts describing and conceptualizing the ‘new
world’.
6 Between these two points in time, it must be also noted, Brasílico naval traders (born
in Brazil) traveled from West to East to prey slaves in the coastal areas of Africa and
exchange silver for gold in India, as analysed in the landmark historical study of the
Atlantic economy by Alencastro Guimarães (2000).
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a ‘Latin American’ lens 73
‘Religion’ as ‘difference’?
In her paper, Dhawan insightfully notes that religion is also a colonial con-
struct. When put in the ‘Latin American’ context, this thread inevitably
leads us to the profound cultural, political normative and social imprints
of Catholicism. The Catholic impregnation is one distinctive marker of
Latin America colonial and post-colonial histories that directly links with
sixteenth-century constructions around the binary Occident–Orient, as
the conversion of peoples inhabiting the territories that were colonized by
Iberian navigators was, to begin with, an extension of the Iberian wars of
7 The most extensively named and analysed icon of nineteenth-century Latin America
civilizations ideology is Facundo, the novel written by Domingos Sarmiento, the 7th
president of Argentina, during his exile in Chile.
8 From that time on, this formula would capture anti-colonial and anti-imperialist
imagination, as expressed by the inverted maps of the region drawn by the Uruguayan
painter Torres Garcia in the early twentieth century.
74 Sonia Corrêa
9 Later, as noted by Vainfas (1988), by the late seventeenth century the Catholic evan-
gelization of the New World would become more directly aligned with the doctrines
of Counter –Reformation, as they have been laid down by the Council of Trent.
10 Mignolo’s (2014) essay, for example, includes the image of a world map drawn by the
cartographer Visscher in 1652 in which the corners are occupied by female avatars
representing Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. In the upper left corner, Europe
is an elegantly dressed woman seated in a pleasant landscape; opposite to her, in the
upper right corner, Asia is portrayed as another elegantly dressed lady, seated on a
camel. In contrast, at the bottom left corner, Africa is represented as a semi-naked
black female seated on an unidentifiable animal (perhaps a crocodile) while America
is located in the bottom right and represented as a not very dark, but also semi-naked,
women seated on an armadillo.
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a ‘Latin American’ lens 75
enslaved, exploited and treated poorly by colonizers (de Las Casas 2004).11
Until independence, the Catholic hierarchy was, to a large extent, an inte-
gral part of the state apparatus and often the Inquisition operated as the
dominant source of criminal justice. Yet, in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century, a significant number of Catholic clerics participated
in independence struggles and were harshly punished by colonial powers
for their rebellion.12
However, when the new independent nation states consolidated, lib-
eral clerics often occupied state positions. As principles of secularity and
laity became hegemonic amongst political elites and began threatening
the moral hegemony of Church doctrines, its hierarchy would virulently
attack secular ideas and related laws. The best illustration is civil marriage
laws, whose adoption by Latin American states had to wait, in most cases,
until the early twentieth century.13 The delay in the approval of divorce
11 The Jesuits have been the most frequent and strongest voices against the enslave-
ment and exploitation of indigenous people by secular colonizers. On the other
hand, some key Jesuit thinkers, as is the case of Vieira, used economic arguments to
justify the enslavement of Africans in the mines and plantations to financially sustain
the crowns and the expansion of Catholicism. Jesuits have also forcefully converted
large sectors of the pre-Hispanic population and, in the case of the Southern Cone,
confined them in Missions that were economic units depending on their labor.
12 In the case of Brazil, for example, five clerics participated in the rebellion, known as
Inconfidência that erupted in 1789 in the mining zone of Minas Gerais ( José Rolim,
Manuel R. Costa, Carlos C. de Toledo e Melo, Luis Vieira da Silva). Later, the friar
Joaquim do Amor Divino Rabelo, known as Frei Caneca led two republican indepen-
dence uprisings in Pernambuco (the 1817 Rebellion and the 1824 Conferederation
of Ecuador). However, after Independence, another cleric, the liberal thinker, Diogo
Antonio Feijó, was to become the regent in the long and complex political transition
between the First and the Second Empire.
13 Once again, I will use the Brazilian example. In 1824, the Brazil Constitution defined
the new state as being established as a Catholic nation, but in 1830, a new Criminal
Code was adopted that followed the liberal rules of Beccaria, including abolishing
the colonial sodomy law (while retaining specific penalties for slaves). However, the
Church, posed so many obstacles to the adoption of civil marriage that it wasn´t
adopted until 1891, after the shift to a republican regime. Some authors go as for to
suggest that the Church resistance to civil marriage is to be interpreted as one main
76 Sonia Corrêa
obstacle that throughout the nineteenth century and beyond has impeded the adop-
tion of a comprehensive civil code in Brazil (the first Civil Code was approved in
1916).
14 Another key feature of this intertwining is that colonial secular criminal norms and
Canonic law deeply overlapped in many aspects but especially concerning sexual
matters. The crime of sodomy inscribed in Spanish and Portuguese colonial statutes
came directly from Biblical admonitions and the Inquisition list of nefarious sins.
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a ‘Latin American’ lens 77
15 Brazil was the fifth country in the ‘South’ to abolish the crime of sodomy in 1830,
following France (1791), Monaco, (1793), Luxembourg (1795) and The Netherlands
(1811) and was followed in Latin American by Guatemala (1871), Mexico (1871), and
Argentina (1886).
78 Sonia Corrêa
Charting distinctions
Let’s get back to Sabsay’s question: Can the lens of the ‘Oriental other’
precisely capture these trajectories and roots described above? My own
response is: Yes, but only partially. The critiques of Orientalism touch the
open nerves of racialization, sexualization and subalternity produced by the
colonial power and gaze evident everywhere: ‘Latin America’ also belongs
to the ‘porno-tropics for the European imagination’ portrayed by McClintock
(2013). Furthermore, they re-activate hidden specters of mapping, narra-
tives and economic connections between the Americas of the South and
the geographical ‘Orient’ that were propelled by the colonial expansion.
These critical insights are unequivocally valuable in times when
hegemonic discourse and imageries continue feeding the West vs Islam
civilizational opposition everywhere including in ‘Latin American’ soci-
eties.16 On the other hand, the ‘Oriental other lens’ blurs the location of
‘Latin America’ in the real or imagined global South, which has been and
remains one main triggers of anti- and de-colonizing imaginaries. As I see
it, the critical post–colonial queer examining of globalized sexual politics
in Latin America will be better chartered through the conceptual frame
To better ground my final argument, I will briefly map what can be wit-
nessed in Brazil, my own country. The Catholic Church was, and remains,
highly influential in political terms. For example, in 2009 – at the end of
the last term of the Workers’ Party President Lula – an agreement between
the Brazilian state and the Vatican (known as the Concordata) broke with
more than a hundred years of formal separation between the State and the
Church. The law that enacted the Concordata was barely debated by politi-
cal institutions and society at large (Corrêa and Parker 2011).
At the same time, the growth of Evangelism is amongst the more
important social and political phenomena of the last thirty years in Brazil
(along with urbanizations, democratization, declining birth rates and pov-
erty reduction). Since the 1980’s, Brazilian churches – which began as
18 It is worth noting perhaps that the deep effects of Catholicism as a ‘colonial con-
struct’ do not appears prominently in the writings of ‘Latino’ post-colonial thinkers.
Catholicism is, for example scarcely mentioned in Walter Mignolo’s Local histories/
Global designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledge and Border Thinking (2000), which
otherwise is an incredibly inspiring book (8 mention in and none of them examine
directly the colonial effects of Catholicism).
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a ‘Latin American’ lens 81
21 Mignolo (2014) uses the concept of de-coloniality. The idea is interesting because it
re-captures the imagination of de-colonization as political project.
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a ‘Latin American’ lens 83
end of the world’, recalling the image crafted by the Argentinean thinker
Bernardo Canal Feijóo much appraised in the post–colonial literature.
Since then, speaking ‘from the end of the world’ he has made a number of
dubious speeches on homosexuality that have created a great deal of interest
in global and regional gay circles,25 while keeping intact the fort of abor-
tion condemnation (Feder 2014). This rich and complex disjunction is, in
my view, an instigating point of departure to begin exploring the second
question raised by Sabsay as to whether sexual politics in Latin America
can or cannot be properly captured by the homo-nationalist hypothesis.
It also directly engaged with Dhawan’s argument that the interpretative
power of queer/sexuality critical theorizing is highly impoverished when
it does not also address the scaffolds and effects of the hetero-procreative
pact in post or de-colonial contexts since abortion – or the right of persons
whose bodies have been ascribed to the female sex at birth to decide about
reproduction – was and remains a cornerstone of this pact.
To conclude …
The argument may be raised that the brief mapping offered above is merely
descriptive of the ‘realpolitik’ of sexuality in ‘Latin America’ failing to
address biopolitical dimensions (or the power of naming and excluding
25 The first of these occasions was an informal chat with journalists on the flight taking
him back to Rome after the International Journey of Youth in Rio de Janeiro (one
main ‘Latino’ gay city) in July 2013. The Pope said the following: ‘If someone is gay
and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t
marginalize people for this. They must be integrated into society.’ In the same con-
versation, however, he also said that he had concerns about the gay lobby in the same
way he had concerns about Franc Mason lobby (<http://www.theguardian.com/
world/2013/jul/29/pope-francis-openness-gay-priests>).
Charting the ‘Orientalized other’ through a ‘Latin American’ lens 85
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the end of neoliberalism. London: Duke University Press.
Alencastro Guimarães, L. F. (2000). O Trato dos Viventes: formação do Brasil no Atlân-
tico Sul. São Paulo: Cia das Letras.
Corrêa, S., de la Dehesa, R. and Parker, R. (2014a). Sexuality and Politics: Regional
Dialogues from the Global South, Volume I. Rio de Janeiro: Sexuality Policy Watch.
<http://www.sxpolitics.org/sexuality-and-politics/volume1.html> accessed on
Feb. 28th 2015.
—— (2014b). Sexuality and Politics: Regional Dialogues from the Global South, Volume
II. Rio de Janeiro: Sexuality Policy Watch. <http://www.sxpolitics.org/sexuality-
and-politics/volume2.html> accessed on Feb. 28th 2015.
Corrêa, S., Arilha, M. and Faleiros, M. (forth coming) ‘Reproductive Statecraft: the
case of Brazil’. In R. Solinger (ed.) Reproductive States. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Corrêa, S., and Parker, R. Sexualidade e Política na América Latina: Histórias,
interseções e paradoxos. Seção 4 Religião e Política Sexual. Sexuality Policy
Watch, Rio de Janeiro. Accessed at <http://www.sxpolitics.org/pt/wp-content/
uploads/2011/07/sessao-4.pdf> on May 1st, 2015.
de las Casas, B. (2004). Brevísima relación de la destruyción de las Indias (Vol. 287). Edaf.
de la Dehesa, R. (2010). ‘Queering the public sphere in Mexico and Brazil: sexual
rights movements in emerging democracies’. Duke: Duke University Press Books.
Falconi, D., Castellanos, S. and Viteri, M. A. (2014). Resentir lo queer en America
Latina – Diálogos desde/con el Cono Sur. Barcelona: Egales Editorial.
26 To defuse as in to remove the fuse from (an explosive device) to prevent it from
exploding.
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Feder, L. (2014). ‘The Pope’s Tone Softens—But The Vatican Is Still Fighting LGBT
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88 Sonia Corrêa
which results from the question of whether we endorse the western model
of both human rights and sexual identities that underscores the contem-
porary internationalization of LGBTIQ rights politics. On the one side,
this choice might be replaying a neo-colonialism of western politics by
adopting these frameworks for international rights and it may encourage
local resistance to LGBTIQ rights by reinforcing the notion that they
are ‘western’ and, therefore, somehow incompatible with anti-colonialist
politics. On the other side, a recognition of these pitfalls makes it dif-
ficult to argue for a sexual diversity politics that recognizes and protects
the rights of LGBTIQ individuals in their local contexts. I begin with a
brief overview of this problem and then turn to the emergence of modern
sexualities in their western context. I argue that this western formation has
become the blueprint for current international human rights strategies that
comprise one side of our central problem. I suggest, however, that we must
understand modern developments of sexuality as part of a complex and
often conflicted development of modernity. In this way, we can begin to
challenge the argument that sexual diversity politics are only possible in a
western version of social and political life because we must recognize that
the ‘western’ narrative is, in fact, only a partial account of the development
of sexualities in modernity. I argue that this recognition is also needed
in anti-colonialist critiques of western LGBTIQ politics. Attempting to
operationalize this understanding and its implications for both sides of the
central problem, I conclude with the idea of a ‘homocolonialist’ test for
our politics, which attempts to both recognize and avoid the consequences
of the central problem where possible.
includes LGBTIQ issues in its rights framework, which it has done since
2000 (Hamzic 2011). More recently, the Yogyakarta Principles emerged
from a group of international jurists and activists who affirmed the rel-
evance of human rights laws and principles to sexual orientation and gender
identity.3 These principles were directed at the United Nations, which
subsequently produced a joint statement on LGBTIQ issued by 85 states
in March 2011 at its Human Rights Council. This statement also commis-
sioned a report from the Human Rights Commissioner which resulted in
the 2012 report, Born Free and Equal, which argues that LGBT4 people
are indisputably covered by human rights principles and recommends that
UN member states move to both decriminalize homosexuality and pro-
tect LGBT people from violence directed towards them. Along with this
international institutional activism, we have seen here increasing public
visibility of LGBTIQ identities globally and advances in rights in national
contexts, particularly since the 1990s (Hildebrandt 2014).
Along with this contemporary legitimization of queer rights and iden-
tities, there remains widespread resistance, both in those countries where
rights have advanced and in those where LGBTIQ issues remain criminal-
ized or at the margins of citizenship. For example, the 2014 special issue of
the Journal of Human Rights contains contributions detailing the organi-
zation of anti-queer politics in Canada and the UK (Browne and Nash,
2014), across the European Union (Ayoub 2014), as well as resistance from
IGOs such as ASEAN (Langlois 2014) and cultures that deploy a ‘tradi-
tionalist’ defence of gender and nation, most recently in Uganda (Bosia
2014) and Russia (Wilkinson 2014). Furthermore, we have evidence of the
trans-national organization of what Weiss and Bosia have described as a
3 The list of signatories can be found at the end of the document ‘The Yogyakarta
Principles: Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in
Relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’ available as a pdf at <http://
www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/principles_en.htm> (accessed October 28, 2014).
None were involved as representatives of their national governments but rather as
individuals or NGO representatives.
4 LGBT is used in the report.
94 Momin Rahman
of its key criteria and, less consistently and much more recently, sexual
diversity. Democratic components to civil society and the political system
certainly helped in both the early and latter stages of national LGBTIQ
movements in the west, but none of these are sufficient in themselves –
structural sociological change in gender divisions and political agency of
LGBTIQ groups are much more directly relevant criteria. Thus, we can
reject the linear temporal equation between modernity and democracy and
LGBTIQ rights – one component of the framing of LGBTIQ citizenship
as possible only in western version of modernity. The factors that permit
LGBTIQ politics are complex and non-linear and below, I demonstrate
further how they are often also contradictory.
homosexualities (1980). The first wave of gay liberation from the 1970s
contributed similar theoretical analyses, most notably in Mary McIntosh’s
argument that the social labelling of the homosexual as deviant served
to police the majority into heterosexuality (1996) and Michel Foucault’s
characterization of the emergence of the homosexual as a deviant ‘species’
through medical, psychological and legal practices that aimed to invest
normative heterosexuality with social dominance (1981). Moreover, by
drawing on Foucault’s theories and cross-cultural anthropology, academic
literatures since the 1980s have emphasized that the equation of sexual
behaviours with specific, discrete, sexual identities was a consequence of
modern ideologies of regulation and science in the west and that, in fact,
historical and cross-cultural evidence demonstrated a variety of homo-
erotic behaviours and potentialities in all people which did not universally
equate same-sex acts with a homosexual ‘type’ of person.
These two major insights about the relationality of hetero/homo
and the historically specific social creation of a stigmatized essentialist
homosexual identity have remained at the analytical core of the gradual
institutionalization of sexuality studies in most western academies since
the era of gay liberation, regardless of different theoretical or disciplinary
approaches. This critique of normative gender or heteronormativity as the
basis of the social stigma of homosexual identities, same-sex behaviours,
and non-normative gender has, however, largely transformed academic
rather than public discourse.
Essentialism remains the dominant cultural framework for understand-
ing gender and sexuality in ‘scientific’ realms and in popular culture and
LGBTIQ politics has overwhelmingly drawn on these essentialist resources
in the pursuit of citizenship, rather than take the more difficult path of chal-
lenging the sex-gender system as a whole. Thus, the lobbying for LGBTIQ
human rights has been based on a minority and ethnic identity model that
fundamentally reassures the majoritarian nature of heterosexuality precisely
because it is based on essentialist understandings of gender and sexuality.
As the recent report from the UN cited above puts it, we are ‘born’ that
way and, because of that essential fact, we can have rights. Thus, the indi-
vidualism central to liberal rights strategies reinforces the individualism
of essentialist understandings of sexuality, so that queer identity politics
102 Momin Rahman
5 See the annual summary from the International Lesbian and Gay Association, by
Lucas Paoli Itaborahy and Jingshu Zhu, 2013, State-Sponsored Homophobia, a world
survey of laws: criminalization, protection and recognition of same-sex love. <http://
ilga.org/ilga/en/article/1161>. Accessed June 24, 2013.
Querying the equation of sexual diversity with modernity 103
6 US based but lobbying for LGBT equality around the world, mostly through online
petitions and funded by supporters. ‘All Out is a combined effort of two organiza-
tions – Purpose Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit advocacy organization focused on
changing policy, and Purpose Foundation, a related 501(c)(3) charitable organiza-
tion focused on education and changing culture.’ See <https://www.allout.org/en/
about>, accessed October 30, 2014.
7 They are, of course, also financially huge, generating billions for the IOC and FIFA,
primarily through sponsorships and television rights, see Rahman and Lockwood,
2011.
Querying the equation of sexual diversity with modernity 107
Conclusion
References
Aggleton, P., Moore, H. L., and Parker, R. (eds) (2012). Understanding Global Sexu-
alities: New Frontiers. London and New York: Routledge.
ALLOUT, <www.allout.org>.
Altman, D. (1993[1971]). Homosexual Oppression and Liberation. New York: New
York University Press
Ayoub, P. M. (2014). ‘With Arms Wide Shut: Threat Perception, Norm Reception, and
Mobilized Resistance to LGBT Rights’, Journal of Human Rights, 13(3), 337–62.
Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity.
Bosia, M. (2014). ‘Strange Fruit: Homophobia, the State, and the Politics of LGBT
Rights and Capabilities’, Journal of Human Rights, 13(3), 256–73.
Browne, K. and Nash, C. J. (2014). ‘Resisting LGBT Rights Where ‘We Have Won:
Canada and Great Britain’, Journal of Human Rights, 13(3), 322–36.
110 Momin Rahman
1 The authors wish to thank Patricia Rosa (UNICAMP), Erica Silva (UFMG), Nava
Narah, Flavia Melo (UFAM) for their support in the research stages and Maria
Amelia Viteri for her comments.
2 Tikunas have 12 clans like for instance Aí (jaguar), ngó’ü (macaw), and nãĩ’yü (ant).
Correct marriage is among adversary clans. It is incestuous to marry within the same
clan lineage because members are considered brothers.
3 This essay capitalizes the word Indigenous because the Chicago Manual of Style (8.41,
15th edition) capitalizes names of ethnic and national groups, including adjectives
associated with these names.
114 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
way to Iquitos. Even small towns along the Javari River valley, the region
with most Indigenous peoples in voluntary isolation, held its own gay Pride
celebration under the anthem of Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’. The old
Peruvian rubber-boom town of Cavallococha holds annual Drag Queen
Contests that attracts international participants. In Islandia, where Brazil,
Peru and Colombia meet, transvestites watch soccer games side to side
with Catholic priests on Sundays. Tikuna homo-affective families raise
their children in accordance to ancestral clan lines.
Amazonia is not always prey to external domination, as worried Claude
Levi Strauss, it is also a creative maker of symbols of modernity. Expressions
of varied sexualities are daily business, unveiling rather queer tropics. Is
sexual diversity stirred up by global trends or embedded in local culture?
The adoption of LGBT discourse in the form of Gay Prides indicates the
influence of global frameworks using an international language of sexual
rights. Yet Tikuna homo-affective experiences within the clan are evidence
that sexual diversity predates international codification. Amazonians use
the international grammar of sexual rights, yet they have engaged in diverse
sexualities long before globalization gave them the political language (and
songs) to say so.
In Indians in unexpected places, Phillip Deloria (2004) explored cul-
tural expectations that branded Indigenous peoples as having missed out
on modernity. Colonial narratives formed expectations that chuckle at
the anomaly of a Native woman in a beauty parlor. Here, we do a similar
exercise of debunking cultural expectations about Amazonia being non-
modern through Indigenous sexualities. Like the Native woman in a beauty
parlor, Indigenous homosexuality surprises because it indicates modernity
in unexpected places. This chapter proposes a sexuality approach to rethink
narratives of modernity about Amazonia. First, sexuality sheds light on
global dynamics of gender in peripheries where they tend to be overlooked.
The fact that LGBT politics are tangible all along the Amazon River points
the extent to which the ‘local’ and the ‘global’ permanently interact with
and redefine each other. Second, a look at sexual identities shatters flatten-
ing generalizations about the Amazon as pre-modern. Gay pride activities
depart from the imagination of an atemporal and homogenous Amazon
to reveal instead a diverse, complex society that partakes in global politics.
Queering Amazonia 115
4 Josi Tikuna realized her interview in the Alto Solimões region, Amazonas, Brazil
(2012).
5 We use their Tikuna names, as they requested, to signal clan belonging, a fundamental
feature in the production of Tikuna identity, and to keep a certain anonymity that
could protect them from possible retaliations.
116 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
Amazon rainbow
Latin America has been at the vanguard of sexual politics in various ways
(Corrales and Pecheny 2010). Many countries passed progressive legisla-
tion to expand homosexual civil rights, from the legalization of sex change
in identity documents in Ecuador to same-sex marriage in Argentina
Queering Amazonia 117
6 Since 2001 the Brazilian government provides benefits to homosexual partners, such
as pension in case of death (<http://www.ggb.org.br/Inss casais gays recebem ben-
eficios 2011>). The Ministry for Social Security released new benefits for same-sex
couples, which the government estimates to be over 60 thousand.
118 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
7 The Brazilian government regulates access to the Javari River Valley, with river patrols
that only let through boats with ministerial authorization. There has been much
debate about un-contacted tribes across the Amazon having had prior contact with
mainstream societies. Scholars and practitioners increasingly prefer to refer to them
as groups in voluntary isolation.
Queering Amazonia 119
a home with her husband and interacts with neighbors in her feminine
identity. Yet she kept her masculine identity in the workplace, switching
back into her masculine self every morning to go teach.
Benjamin Constant held its first Gay Pride in 2011. The local branch of
Brazil’s Federal University of the Amazon (UFAM) organized the town’s
first LGBT forum in the first days of December 2011. After a daylong event
that discussed LGBT rights to education, security, health, and work, over
60 participants gathered to parade a large rainbow flag through town.
Transvestites dancing to the gay anthem ‘I Will Survive’ in sexy glittering
outfits opened the march alongside anthropology students, followed by a
lively crowd chanting slogans against homophobia. Mothers carried young
children on honking motorbikes, grandparents mixed with Indigenous
lesbians, soccer players paraded alongside sex workers. The event gener-
ated a few confused looks and awkward smiles, but no signs of violence.
Instead, the contagious enthusiasm enticed bystanders to join in a lively
group of perhaps a hundred people as the parade made its way to the port.
Transportation difficulties prevented more people from participating. A
Tikuna delegation from the Brazilian town of Feijoal, a good four hours
away on boat, got stuck on its way upriver. The crowd was not larger also
because of a competing event: many people were attending the annual
Country Drag Queen Contest in the old rubber-town of Cavallococha,
Peru. Jackie, the town’s recurrent Carnival Queen, had won last year’s con-
test and expectations were high for a repeat.
Native queerness
with men, and Ngüe Tügümaêgüé refers to women with other women.
In Tupinambá, the respective equivalents are tibira and çacoaimbeguira
(Fernandes 2015).8 Many more languages have words for non-heterosexual
practices: cudinhos in Guaicurus, guaxu in Mbya, cunin in Krahò, kudina in
Kadiwéu, hawakyni in Javaé. It is worth remembering that various anthro-
pologists described homo/bi sexuality across Amazonia, including Lévi-
Strauss (1996), Clastres (1995), Gregor (1985), and Darcy Ribeiro (1997).
Indigenous diverse sexualities are tangible even where they lack formal orga-
nizing or when homosexuality is not conceptualized with specific wording.
Indigenous queerness permeates not only Amazonia, but the Americas
at large. In Oaxaca, Mexico, Juchitán de Zaragoza is famous for its accep-
tance of ‘muxes,’ a Zapoteca third gender similar to transvestism, who
are not marginalized and therefore more visible than in most places (See
Chapter Carlos Leal Reyes). In the US, Native Americans refer to sexual
variation through the concept of Two-Spirits, and at least three tribes have
formally recognized marriage equality for same-sex couples. Aymara activ-
ist Julieta Paredes claims Indigenous languages in Bolivia comprise up to
nine different gender categories. Indigenous queerness is now recognized
by inter-governmental institutions. On March 16 2013, the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States
heard the testimonies of elected officials at a panel ‘Situation of the Human
Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Indigenous
Persons in the Americas.’
Indigenous queerness, in its own contextual realities, predates the
global LGBT framework. The global framework permits a specific politi-
cal conceptualization, together with the recognition of civil and economic
rights attached to sexual identities. Gay soccer teams, gay-friendly tour-
ism and gay prides invoke international discourse to open public venues
to make sexual identities visible. Yet they are tools, they do not create new
sexualities. The multiplicity of sexualities is not an import but native to
Amazonia. In fact, a closer look at Tikuna sexualities reveals that external
8 The documentary ‘Tibira is gay’ explores the complex variety of sexual identities in
Indigenous communities.
Queering Amazonia 121
Tikunas are almost fifty thousand peoples living in a region that spreads
across Brazil, Colombia, and Peru. More than half of them live within the
borders of Brazil, many in the Alto Solimões region, in the surroundings of
Benjamin Constant.9 Tikunas self-identify as Magüta, which means ‘people
fished with a pole in the land of the sacred Eware.’ Their founding myth
tells the story of a people coming from Amazon Rivers, and they consider
themselves direct descendants of the rivers. Elders say that the day Magüta
people disappear, the entire world will disappear. Tikuna peoples maintain
an isolate language10 and cultivate unique traditions like the ritual of the
moça nova, which marks the passing of female puberty.11 They also have
clan rules that respect same sex couples.
The ‘rule of nations’ is highly respected in Tikuna society. This rule organizes
conjugal exchanges among clans that, when respected, generates so-called
into the enchaquirado’s legacy revealed not only the coloniality in the
production of Guayaquil’s sexual past, but also the pervasive limitations of
the region’s post-colonial historical approaches, a point stressed by Sonia
Correa in Part 1.
Our research builds on efforts to dispel the idea that same-sex female
desire is rooted in Western modernity (Blackwood and Wieringa 1999).
The religious components that permeate discriminatory judgments are at
the core of the life stories narrated below. Churches have introduced the
notion that lesbianism is a deviant option forbidden in the eyes of God,
permeating Tikuna cosmovision with exogenous moralities that signal the
power of religion over Indigenous peoples.
14 Interviews with Botchicüna and Metchi’ïna realized by Josi Tikuna in a hostel outside
their community, October 2, 2012.
124 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
her partner Metchi’ïna for almost a decade. Metchi’ïna was still a teenager
when they fell in love. Botchicüna parents, well-known and politically
influential in the community, belong to the Independent Baptist Church.15
Metchi’ïna left her parents’ house to move in with her secret love as ‘the
maid.’ At 26, she studied nutrition and has ever since been living with her
partner in ‘secrecy.’ For eight years, Metchi’ïna and Botchicüna have kept
their clandestine love undercover.
Waire’ena and Tchore’ena, in contrast, have not had to hide their sexu-
ality. They had, however, to find creative solutions to negotiate their place
within the community. Both live with their parents who accept their sexual
choices ‘without rejection’ despite religious criticism within the community.
Tchore’ena never hid from her family, who live from farming and fishing.
Although this couple has been accepted by their families, the families
have had to challenge religious dogmas that influence contemporary ways of
being Indigenous. It was difficult at first. Tchore’ena’s father was ambivalent
about the whole thing. There were times when he would reject her and get
hugely upset over her relationships. During those awkward family moments,
Tchore’ena’s brother would come to her rescue and help her escape to the
city. It was only when Tchore’ena had threatened to leave the house for good
that her father came face to face with his fears and accepted his daughter
the way she was. Now she is a 28-year-old student of Anthropology living
in a family fully supportive of her homo-affective relationship. However,
the community has not been as accepting as her family. Tchore’ena and
her family are treated with contempt and discriminated against by their
community. But the family decided to turn a blind eye to the nasty jokes
against them in the village.
The story of her partner Waire’ena, a 32-year-old accountant, entails the
larger community. Her father is a pastor in a religion called Brotherhood
of Santa Cruz, born from the messianic movement created in the 1970s in
the Alto Solimões region. Her father was hesitant in accepting her situa-
tion because of the repercussions his daughter’s sexuality would have on his
public religious-political reputation. He worried about moral considerations
like honor and respect that were elements to negotiate his legitimacy and
thus social position. ‘My father was much criticized because of how I live
my life,’ tells Waire’ena, ‘people talked so much against us that he almost
gave up on his priesthood.’ He eventually talked to the head priest of his
Church, who described the difficult times his family was going through as
a ‘challenge from God.’ That is when he ‘woke up,’ recalls Waire’ena. Her
father interpreted the challenge to be teaching his followers the tolerance
of diverse forms of sexuality. His role was to convince the community to
embrace all human beings as they are thus accepting his daughter’s homo-
affective choices. He talked to people across his Church, preached for
same-sex love. He normalized his daughter’s homo-affective relationship
in the eyes of the community. ‘After that,’ says Waire’ena, ‘people stopped
talking about our lives.’
The four women faced rejection because their love was ‘wrong,’ ‘for-
bidden’, even ‘incestuous.’ They were cursed as ‘lesbians’ and their fami-
lies cursed. Many fear making their sexuality public. ‘Some mothers even
forbid their daughters to see me because I am machuda16’ said one of them.
Discrimination turns into social marginalization. These contexts destroy
ties of cultural belonging, making women feel excluded. Some leave their
communities, even commit suicide.
These experiences varying from secrecy within the family to normaliza-
tion of same-sex couples in the community signal the influence of religious
discourse within Tikuna culture. It also sheds light on creative inter-cultural
negotiations.
16 Machuda, from macho, is a pejorative way to refer to women who have sex with
women as virile and masculine rather than feminine.
126 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
17 Moça Nova: Tikuna ritual marking female puberty in which the young girl is put in
a room.
Queering Amazonia 127
interfere in any way with Tikuna culture. To the contrary, it helps con-
solidate Indigenous culture even if it is in ways different from their older
parents and converted people.
The women also argue that sex has to do with pleasure and admiration,
not only reproduction. Sex, they claim, is ‘to enjoy the person you love and
be loved for real.’ In that sense, they question conventional gender roles.
Botchicüna explains that in ancient times clothing did not define who was
a man or a woman, but today there are codes to dress and to behave to be
a woman. ‘Women now must have long hair, wear long dresses without
showing their bodies. They are to have children and take care of them, cook,
wash clothes, serve the men and fulfill their wishes. Men are the ones with
short hair who fish, hunt, plant, wear long pants … in other words, the one
who poses as the boss in and outside the home.’
Metchincüna blames discrimination on dogmatic religious interven-
tion. ‘It cannot be wrong, if it were it should have been since the beginning
and not something new. Those are people who truly love each other, who
understand each other. Our ancestors lived like that it is religion that comes
in to interfere with other peoples’ culture.’ She associates the presence of
churches with perceptions of ‘forbidden loves.’
Discrimination was not always there. Tchecürana, a 78 years old farmer
from the Buriti clan, recalls same-sex couples living together without dis-
crimination in her youth. ‘There were these two men,’ she recalls, ‘older than
me, who had long lived together. They had their own house as if they were a
couple of man and woman. Our community always respected them. It seems
that today the Tikuna people have been contaminated by the spreading dis-
ease of discrimination. This is slowly bringing the Tikuna nation into war;
power domination, politics and religion are making Tikuna peoples cease
to be who they are.’ Tchecürana sees discrimination against homo-affective
couples as a source of conflict among Tikuna people. Homosexuality is not
the end of Tikuna culture, she says. What is destroying Tikuna culture is
the social exclusion against people in homo-affective relationships.
There are different ways of being a woman or a mother in Indigenous
culture. Women involved in same-sex relationships give continuity to the
Tikuna rule of nations. They find innovative ways to pursue cultural trans-
mission, including artificial insemination. Indigenous homosexuality is seen
128 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
as a monster and stigmatized in private and public spaces. Yet the Tikuna
experiences above reveal creativity to redefine ways of being Indigenous.
Further, they show how Indigenous peoples negotiate new spaces in global
processes of cultural transformation.
Locating modernity
18 When Uganda passed the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, Norway and Denmark cut aid
(Plaut 2014).
Queering Amazonia 129
many ways, sexual rights are embedded in the secular ‘Etat de Droit,’ echo-
ing the consolidation of legal rights and European universalism.
Amazonia, in contrast, symbolizes the very antithesis of modernity. It is
imagined as an apolitical Eden, nature at its purest (Slater 2002). Amazonia
is not perceived as a place that creates (sexual) modernity. Instead it tends
to be invoked as one of the most biologically diverse regions on Earth to
be ‘preserved’ from the forces of modernization. Popular culture perpetu-
ates perceptions of a wilderness scarcely populated by indigenous groups,
themselves part of their wild habitat, whose cultures are to be preserved
from global modernity. Amazonia has been framed as a land without his-
tory (da Cunha 2006), a place of wilderness located in some apolitical
past. The region is largely perceived as isolated from world politics and
homogeneously pre-modern, thus never becoming an object of study of
modern politics (Picq 2014). World politics tend to reach Amazonia from
ecological perspectives that emphasize the extractive industries that pollute
the environment (Orta-Martínez and Finer 2009). As Susanna Hecht and
Cockburn’s (2011) suggested, political approaches concerned with the ‘fate
of the Forest’ reinforce the idea of a passive region prey to global forces.
This chapter challenges both of these assumptions about the location
of modernity. Diverse sexualities are not western nor is Amazonia isolated
in some authentic past untouched by global dynamics. In the prior chapter,
Momin Rhaman challenges the idea that sexual diversity politics are only
possible in a western version of social and political life. We must recog-
nize that the ‘western’ narrative is, he argues, only a partial account of the
development of sexualities in modernity. Modern sexualities may emerge
in their western context, but modern developments of sexuality are part of
a complex and often conflicted development of modernity. Tikuna expe-
riences of homo-affectivity in Amazonia make linear equations of sexual
diversity with modernity untenable. Phillip Deloria (2004) would argue
that Indigenous peoples (and places) are all too often interpreted through
the lens of Euro-American expectations formed in ways that furthered
colonial projects.
Sexuality perspectives debunk the myth of an Amazon isolated at the
most distant peripheries and disentangled from global modernity. This
chapter calls attention to a modernity embedded in colonial processes,
130 Josi Tikuna and Manuela Lavinas Picq
as Sonia Correa has pointed earlier in this book. Indigeneity invites new
gazes to pursue critical inquiry, but how are we to think it in relation to
modernity? Are Tikuna societies ‘modern’ because they permit homo-
affective love?
Indigenous cosmopolitanism
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Queering Amazonia 133
2 El término constituye una derivación fonética que los zapotecas empezaron a usar,
según algunos documentos, en el siglo XVI. Desde la época precolombina, los zapo-
tecas consideraban a los muxes parte de un tercer sexo, no mejor o peor que los
hombres y mujeres, simplemente diferentes. Ver: Alberto Guerrero Ochoa: ‘Notas
sobre la homosexualidad en el Istmo de Tehuantepec’ en: El medio Milenio, No 5,
febrero de 1989, Oaxaca, p. 64.
3 Entre otros podemos encontrar: muxe benda: muxe hermana; muxe gueta: tortillera,
que se acuesta también con otro homosexual; muxe gupa: muxe joven, afeminado,
que ‘apenas comienza’ o que tiene el ‘ano húmedo’; muxe tre: de aspecto maltrecho;
muxe ngola: grande o de complexión fornida; muxe guie: que se traviste de istmeña;
muxe ngiu: jota machina; muxe dxe: que toma mucho, como unas comadres; muxe
tede: de aspecto enfermizo; muxe chipa: de aspecto enfermizo y amarillento; muxe
laga: alto y delgado; muxe guaga: con el ano muy dilatado (Miano, 2001).
140 Carlos Alberto Leal Reyes
7 Las tecnologías del yo, de acuerdo con Foucault (2000: 48) ‘permiten a los individuos
efectuar, por cuenta propia o por la ayuda de otros, cierto número de operaciones
‘Queerizando’ a lxs muxes 147
‘… como una construcción social … que ponga de relieve los diversos grados y dife-
rentes espacios de poder que se distribuyen en todas las categorías sexuales, inclu-
yendo la heterosexualidad … derivan en la negación de una normalidad sexual para
promover la existencia de otras sexualidades a las que, en su afán de legitimación,
terminan elevando a la categoría de liberadoras simplemente porque suponen una
transgresión de la norma …’ (López 2008: 24)
encontrar los significados atribuidos a las funciones que cada uno de estos
individuos juega dentro de la comunidad. La construcción de identidades
sexo genéricas se presenta en relación con un sistema de percepciones y
pertenencias socioculturales diversas.
Las formas de comunicación de cada uno de estos estados revelan un
conjunto de esquemas de socialización donde se negocian constantemente
distintos referentes de identidad vinculados a un conjunto de imaginarios
que ponen al límite las nociones tradicionales de hombre y mujer, al prio-
rizar posibilidades de ser y estar en el mundo partiendo de los nombres
otorgados y/o asumidos de forma individual.
Lxs muxe, transgreden el ‘orden’ sexual y demuestran, con su simple
existencia, que las ‘normas de la naturaleza’ –o la heterosexualidad como
‘naturaleza social’– no son tan ‘naturales’ y obvias como el sentido común
promovido por la modernidad supone, que ser excluyentemente hombre
o mujer puede ser una ficción, y que la realidad también contempla el ‘des-
orden’ y la discontinuidad.
Referencias
Mi nombre es Lía pero todos me llaman ‘La Novia’, soy una mujer trans-
género originaria de la ciudad de México. Inicié mi transición de género
de hombre a mujer en el año de 2013, mismo año en que inicié a estudiar
artes visuales en la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Ambas
decisiones fueron tomadas al mismo tiempo y por supuesto, comenzaron
un diálogo muy íntimo. Este texto funciona como una memoria familiar
y pretende tener diálogos directos con el recuerdo, la imaginación, las
emociones y la reflexión personal de cada lector. Es un álbum fotográfico
y textual sobre una fiesta que se dilata en el tiempo y que parte de una sola
persona para convertirse en colectiva. También es un espacio de visibi-
lización de prácticas artísticas transgénero situadas en el contexto Cuir
Latinoamericano.
Cuando tome la decisión de iniciar mi construcción como sujeto
femenino me dije a mi misma que quería hacer de esta experiencia un
recuerdo alegre. No me refiero a la alegría desde el optimismo común,
sino a la búsqueda de experiencias políticas relacionadas con la ternura, el
cariño, la amistad y la festividad, porque parece que la experiencia trans-
género esta siempre relacionada con sentimientos y emociones que cobran
sentido a partir de pérdidas y estados emocionales como la tristeza, el enojo,
el anonimato y la incertidumbre. También tiene una fuerte relación con
la violencia estructural, con mayor o menor intensidad dependiendo del
espacio geográfico donde nos encontremos. Con esto me refiero al estigma
social que construyen las instituciones hacia las personas que decidimos
cambiar de género como sujetos sin derechos e invisibles.
158 Lía La Novia
Pero ¿acaso es cierto que somos invisibles? ¿cuáles son los logros que
hemos alcanzado desde el activismo en materia de derechos humanos y
política pública trans en Latinoamérica? ¿cómo dialoga la experiencia
transgénero con el arte y la pedagogía? ¿toda transición es educativa persé?
Estas preguntas son las que dieron forma a nuestro debate sobre políticas
trans en la V Conferencia internacional ‘Queering Paradigms’ Trastocando
Paradigmas de la modernidad, realizada en el mes de Febrero de 2013 en
Quito, Ecuador, donde nos juntamos múltiples personas de Latinoamérica
y otras partes del mundo para construir conocimiento de acuerdo a nues-
tras preocupaciones sobre el tema del género, el cuerpo, la sexualidad y su
manifestación en nuestros contextos sociopolíticos.
En este libro deseo compartir un fragmento de mi investigación actual
y continuar con el debate sobre la identidad transgénero en el contexto
Latinoamericano y sus cruces con el arte y la educación; Me parece muy
interesante que este espacio funcione como un momento desde donde
localizar la identidad transgénero y sus fusiones con el arte y el activismo.
En el caso de Latinoamérica o el contexto Sudaca, como muchos lo lla-
mamos, existimos colectivas y personas que hemos hecho de nuestros
tránsitos de género una experiencia de denuncia, artística, crítica y en
constante diálogo con el contexto sociopolítico de nuestros espacios
geográficos.
Este escrito constituye un espacio donde la experiencia se conecta con
la academia, es como darle cuerpo a la institución y ponerla a dialogar con
lo íntimo, lo que sucede en las calles, en nuestras casas y espacios cotidianos.
Es de esta manera que la academia encuentra su activismo, con la ruptura
de los muros del aula para dejar entrar otros tipos de conocimiento y con-
firmar, al mismo tiempo, que lo personal es político.
Siguiendo el argumento de Marisa Belausteguigoitia (2012) ‘Existe
una Pedagogía que apuesta por la creatividad, por la ‘toma de la palabra’ y
su consiguiente producción de nuevos saberes y prácticas partiendo desde
un punto de vista crítico’ (2012: 25). Es necesario que esta Pedagogía se
instale en la academia y retorne a los cuerpos para construir estrategias
activistas de conocimiento que nos conduzcan a que la institución también
pueda ser un espacio que rompa las normas que la tensionan de manera
estratégicas.
Puede besar a la novia 159
Ya decía Donna Haraway, que las mujeres somos las que tenemos cuerpo, las
marcadas, las que construimos desde una posición no objetiva e interesada:
‘se nos prohíbe no tener un cuerpo o poseer un punto de vista o un prejuicio
en cualquier discusión’ (Haraway 1995: 314) Haraway, consecuente con su
planteo, está hablando como mujer, en y desde su cuerpo, y es desde allí
donde sitúa su discusión con un tipo de objetividad, la de ellos, el punto de
vista masculinista que se yergue como único, como la mirada que nada ve.
Retomando la idea de situar la experiencia no solamente en el cuerpo
que la describe, me planteo presentar cuatro casos, incluyendo el mío de
personas transgénero que situamos la experiencia trans en nuestro contexto
y en otras plataformas de expresión que la hacen pública y por lo tanto
política. Se trata de construir otras experiencias que escapen del estigma
universal en torno al cuerpo trans y que la sociedad patriarcal ejerce sobre
estas identidades.
Los dos primeros casos se sitúan en Argentina. Se trata de las artistas
Susy Shock y Effy Beth. Susy Shock (Barrio de Balvanera, Buenos Aires,
1968) es una artista trans sudaca, en sus palabras y actriz, escritora, cantante
y docente universitaria. En 2011 editó el Poemario Transpirado y Relatos
en Canecalón. Esta artista sitúa su experiencia en la música, la poesía y la
construcción de redes afectivas en cada una de sus presentaciones. Citando
a Susy en una parte de su Poema Transpirado, que es un recital musical
público, la artista nos comparte:
el problema mas grande para mí fue lo del nombre, acostumbrar a las personas mas
cercanas a que me llamaran por mi nombre fue difícil, y cuando lo logré siempre
tenía que intentar darme cuenta que ante las instituciones seguía siendo Lucia y no
Gabriel y eso es una desventaja porque no encuentras trabajo, eso me causa mucha
rabia (Gabriel, 34).
pues, creo que algo fuerte es la perdida, por un lado de privilegios y por otro de perso-
nas, en cuanto a los privilegios, yo antes cuando era mas masculino, podía andar en las
calles sin que me violentaran o me gritaran cosas desde una posición de poder, otros
hombres, ahora siendo mujer transgénero, me siento mas vulnerable en el espacio
164 Lía La Novia
‘El ritual de la boda es una Ceremonia religiosa o civil en la cual se celebra el comienzo
del matrimonio. Generalmente una boda es un rito que formaliza la unión entre dos
168 Lía La Novia
personas ante una autoridad externa que regula y reglamenta el procedimiento, el cuál
genera compromisos contractuales u obligaciones legales –según las legislaciones–
entre las partes o contrayentes.’ (2003: 87)
Referencias
1 He escrito sobre estas cuestiones en algún trabajo anterior: ‘Desde los márgenes.
Prácticas y representaciones queer en el Estado español’, en Grupo de Trabajo Queer,
El eje del mal es heterosexual. Figuraciones, movimientos y prácticas feministas queer.
Madrid, Traficantes de Sueños, 2005: 29–44 (el libro está disponible en <http://
www.traficantes.net/sites/default/files/pdfs/El%20eje%20del%20mal-TdS.pdf>).
176 Gracia Trujillo
Queer tiene una genealogía política en cada contexto (o puede ser también
que no la tenga, o que el término no resuene o no se use, y entonces sería
interesante analizar el por qué). En el contexto del Estado español, durante
bastante tiempo el relato sobre el surgimiento de las políticas cuir (término
que se ha utilizado para reivindicar esa necesaria contextualización preci-
samente) fue el estadounidense, un reflejo de la hegemonía de los análisis
del Norte de América.5 Es fundamental contextualizar la historia de los
procesos del surgimiento y desarrollo de las políticas queer, y producir un
conocimiento crítico sobre y desde lo cuir en el Sur de Europa. Aunque
este capítulo está centrado en el caso del Estado español, creo que en el
sur europeo tenemos muchas cuestiones que analizar todavía al respecto.
Las teorizaciones (en plural) y prácticas políticas queer presentan, no
exentas de tensiones, una crítica a la normalización de los géneros, cuerpos,
deseos y afectos, evidenciando las relaciones de poder que atraviesan a los
sujetos. Queer, como sabemos, es un término inglés que significa desviadx,
raritx, extrañx, no normal, y fue utilizado para designar un conjunto de
prácticas políticas y teorías surgidas a finales de los años ochenta como
contestación a las políticas identitarias articuladas en torno a un sujeto
‘gay’, ‘lesbiana’ o ‘mujer’, que excluían a muchxs de aquellxs a los que decían
representar. Es un término injurioso que está dirigido a lxs desviadxs de la
norma (hetero)sexual; en castellano traducciones comunes del mismo son
7 La concepción del poder de Michel Foucault es uno de los elementos centrales de las
teorías y prácticas queer. El poder es entendido no como el conjunto de instituciones
que garantizan la sujeción de las personas, sino como una red compleja de relaciones
susceptibles de producirse en todas partes. Un poder que no se adquiere sino que se
ejerce y, en palabras de Foucault, ‘donde hay poder hay resistencia, y no obstante (o
mejor: por lo mismo), ésta nunca está en posición de exterioridad respecto del poder’
(1978: 116).
¿Y tú te defines como queer? 181
8 Sobre ACT UP- París, véanse los textos recogidos en la compilación sobre la pan-
demia del SIDA de Ricardo Llamas (1995: 249–81).
9 Sobre el concepto de ‘comunidad imaginada’, Anderson (2006).
182 Gracia Trujillo
Frente a lo que se suele criticar de las propuestas queer (¿y qué hace-
mos con la lucha colectiva si acabamos con las identidades?) hay que seña-
lar que este tipo de activismo defiende la importancia de las identidades,
entendidas como única forma de resistencia (Vidarte y Llamas 1999) y, al
mismo tiempo, el uso de éstas como estrategia política. Se cuestiona así
que la movilización social tenga una base ‘natural’ y estable. Más allá de
una política estrictamente ‘lesbiana’ o ‘gay’ o ‘trans’, defienden un activismo
transversal a las distintas opresiones. Queer no es una identidad sino una
interrogación crítica de las identidades que alude, además, a esos espacios de
intersecciones complejas de diversas variables que incluyen, entre otras, la
clase, el género, la edad, la etnia, la raza o la diversidad funcional. Frente a las
discriminaciones y ante la necesidad de crear redes y construir comunidad,
la estrategia no puede ser entonces la negociación institucional, orientada
a la consecución de derechos específicos. Como apunta Llamas (1998:
372), ‘la igualdad es rechazada, no sólo como ficticia (habida cuenta de los
aparatos de represión y discriminación más o menos institucionalizados),
sino además como indeseable’. Y, sin embargo, aunque estos grupos no
estuvieran interesados en las reformas legales como objetivos prioritarios,
sus movilizaciones en la calle contribuyeron a acelerar la consecución de
estos cambios (Trujillo 2009). En otras palabras, el cuestionamiento de la
heterosexualidad como régimen político; la denuncia de las múltiples des-
igualdades, discriminaciones y violencias a las que nos enfrentamos en el
sistema heteropatriarcal, racista y clasista en el que vivimos, y la movilización
frente a la pandemia del SIDA han sido y son fundamentales para el avance
de los derechos y libertades sexuales, y para el cambio social en general.
10 Sobre esta cuestión, ver Butler, Judith. 1993. ‘Acerca del término queer’, en Cuerpos
que importan. Sobre los límites materiales y discursivos del ‘sexo’. Buenos Aires, Paidós,
2002, pp. 313–39.
11 Acerca de este etcétera, señal del desbordamiento de las categorías identitarias y de
la proliferación de las mismas, ha reflexionado Butler en Gender Trouble (1990).
184 Gracia Trujillo
12 Moraga, Cherrie y Anzaldúa, Gloria. This Bridge Called My Back (Writings by Radical
Women of Color). New York, Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press, 1982. Sobre la
crítica desde los feminismos negros, lesbianos y postcoloniales, se puede consultar la
compilación titulada Otras inapropiables. Feminismos desde las fronteras, publicada
por la editorial Traficantes de Sueños (Madrid) en 2004.
13 Gloria Anzaldúa Borderlands/ La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987; Audre Lorde,
Sister Outsider, 1984; Donna Haraway, Ciencia, cyborgs y mujeres, 1984; y Rosi
Braidotti Sujetos nómadas, 2000.
¿Y tú te defines como queer? 185
La vida política de la LRG fue corta (unos pocos años) pero intensa. Lo
mismo sucedió con LSD, que se disolvió en 1998. Dos años más tarde se
organiza en Madrid Las Goudous, y posteriormente Bollus Vivendi (fan-
zine del cual fui cofundadora, y que alcanzó una difusión bastante nota-
ble), seguido por otros muchos proyectos políticos activistas queer/cuir
y feministas, mestizos, pornopunk, transfeministas … a lo largo y ancho
del Estado español, como el mencionado Grupo de Trabajo Queer, del que
formé asimismo parte, La acera del Frente, o el BALS, Bloque alternativo
para la liberación sexual, en Madrid; Post- Op, Quimera Rosa y la Guerrilla
Travolaka en Barcelona; Medeak en Donosti y las Maribolheras Precarias
de A Coruña, entre muchos otros. Los grupos cuir (GTQ entre ellos) y
las lesbianas feministas de Barcelona fueron de las pocas voces críticas que
cuestionaron el viraje de agenda política del movimiento lgtb a finales de
los años noventa y comienzos de los dos mil, esto es, la modificación de la
demanda de la ley de parejas de hecho, que tenía ya una andadura de unos
La Asamblea tiene una ‘agenda’ (si podemos llamarla así en el caso del
activismo radical) bastante abultada, y en sus acciones busca la articulación
con otros grupos frente a los recortes sociales y las políticas de austeridad en
el contexto actual de crisis del sistema neoliberal. Este conjunto amplio de
frentes incluye, entre otras demandas, la despatologización de las identidades
trans; el control y/o modificación de nuestros cuerpos y sexualidades; los
derechos reproductivos; el VIH/SIDA; la educación sexual; la lucha por
los derechos de ciudadanía para todxs; los derechos de las trabajadoras del
sexo y domésticas; la denuncia de las agresiones homófobas y la despoliti-
zación y mercantilización del Orgullo.19 Pero no sólo se moviliza por estas
cuestiones, sino que participa en todas las manifestaciones, concentraciones
y acciones posibles contra los recortes en la educación pública, la sanidad y
los servicios sociales, contra la reforma laboral, entre otras muchas. Todavía
hay gente que nos ve en las manifestaciones con nuestras banderas de colo-
res (el arcoíris de la liberación sexual) y se pregunta qué hacemos ahí, en
una huelga general, apoyando a la marea verde de educación o el Día de la
República (14 de Abril), por mencionar algunos ejemplos, ‘si esto hoy no
es una manifestación para reivindicar el matrimonio gay’, como si lesbianas,
gays, bisexuales, trans, queers no fuéramos también profesoras, precarias,
paradas, migrantes, republicanas …
Uno de los aspectos a los que esta asamblea cuir ha dedicado bastantes
acciones ha sido al cuestionamiento de las actitudes sexistas y homolesbo-
tránsfobas dentro de los propios movimientos sociales que se reflejan, por
ejemplo, en el lenguaje. El 15-M utiliza el femenino plural de manera gene-
ralizada (en asambleas, textos, etc.) como forma de cuestionar el sexismo
en el lenguaje, y ha hecho suya también, como grupo transmaricabollo
(nuestro intento de traducción de queer al contexto español), la estrate-
gia de apropiación del insulto: ante el peyorativo ‘perroflautas’, la ATMB
reivindica que somos todas ‘perras flautas’; solemos, asimismo, llamar la
atención sobre el uso de expresiones que descalifican a las trabajadoras del
20 Algunos de los eslóganes frente a estas alusiones son ‘Placer anal contra el capital’ o
el del Colectivo Hetaira, que trabaja en defensa de los derechos de las trabajadoras del
sexo: ‘Las putas insistimos, los políticos no son nuestros hijos’. Un muy buen análisis
de estas acciones y de la génesis y recorrido de la ATMB, entre otras cuestiones, es el
de Pérez Navarro (2014b).
21 Sobre la lucha feminista dentro del 15-M, Revolucionando. Feminismos en el 15-M.
2012. Barcelona: Ed. Icaria.
190 Gracia Trujillo
22 Sobre esta cuestión, ver el interesante texto de Butler, ‘Cuerpos en alianza y la política
de la calle’, traducción de Patricia Soley-Beltrán, Revista Transversales, nº 26, 2012,
disponible en <http://www.trasversales.net/t26jb.htm>.
¿Y tú te defines como queer? 191
23 A las resistencias a todo lo queer por parte de un sector del feminismo argentino se
refiere también valeria flores en su libro Interruqciones. Ensayos de poética activista.
Escritura, política, pedagogía (2013).
¿Y tú te defines como queer? 193
de la disolución de las mismas. Otro reto es cómo hacer para seguir gene-
rando espacios de resistencia y de movilización a partir de identidades no
binarias. Necesitamos seguir considerando las identidades como localiza-
ciones políticas: mujeres y lesbianas y migrantes y putas … para marcar esa
disidencia de la categoría ‘mujer’, mientras nos siga excluyendo, añadiendo
el término queer o el prefijo trans para subrayar la necesidad de transitar
y visibilizar las diferentes opresiones. Otra cuestión sería cómo podemos
combatir de manera conjunta las violencias y desigualdades que generan
el neoliberalismo, el heteropatriarcado, la heternormatividad, el racismo.
Y aquí es clave la búsqueda de puntos de convergencia y la política de coa-
liciones entre luchas. Eli Vásquez, del Proyecto Transgénero de Ecuador24,
sugiere buscar los diálogos de simetrías subyacentes, muchas veces no tan
explícitas: por ejemplo, entre las trabajadoras del sexo y los latin kings sobre
el uso de espacios en la ciudad.
Para finalizar, entiendo queer como lugar de encuentro, como espacio
de posibilidades. Llamémonos queer o transfeministas o como queramos
según la trayectoria política de los términos y nuestras experiencias en cada
contexto. Lo importante, creo yo, es que se trate de unas prácticas políticas
que no excluyan a nadie y que se utilice queer o cuir o transfeminismo en
clave de resistencia, de transgresión, y de crítica decolonial. Para ello no
podemos olvidar las múltiples fuentes de vulnerabilidades a las que hacemos
frente, los diferentes niveles en los que hay que trabajar y la necesidad de
políticas de coaliciones. En la actualidad, contamos con bastantes grupos
cuir y transfeministas a lo largo y ancho de todo el territorio del Estado
español (la ATMB es sólo uno de ellos), con un trabajo interseccional entre
luchas, ubicados algunos también en los cruces entre activismo y arte (como
el caso del grupo transfeminista Post- op con la diversidad funcional dentro
del proyecto ‘Yes, we fuck’25). A esto hay que sumar unos lazos más fuertes
estos últimos años con América Latina (a través, aunque no sólo, de migran-
txs latinas que están en Europa, y viceversa), que van en la línea a seguir de
24 <http://www.proyecto-transgenero.org/>.
25 Véase <http://postop-postporno.tumblr.com/Pornortopedia> y <http://vimeo.
com/yeswefuck>.
194 Gracia Trujillo
tender puentes entre luchas y charcos, más necesarios que nunca, si cabe,
para seguir resistiendo crítica y colectivamente ante las amenazas globales.
Referencias
Un clásico adagio jurídico dice que ‘en Derecho las cosas se deshacen como
se hacen’. Me pareció pertinente invocarlo a propósito de lo que aquí voy a
plantear: que recordemos que la temática de la identidad de género se ubica
en una rama del Derecho tan clásica como lo es la civil y que nos permita-
mos explorar el debate en los términos y la lógica de esa rama.
Reguladora de las personas, sus bienes y las transacciones que se dan
unas veces entre ellas, otras más con ellos de por medio, la ley civil ha mol-
deado el desarrollo de la identidad como una institución jurídica ligada al
concepto mismo de ‘persona’. Regresar a este origen civilista de la identi-
dad es abrir una puerta vieja que, no obstante, aporta elementos valiosos
a la discusión contemporánea sobre la identidad de las personas trans. En
lo que sigue, presentaré algunos de esos elementos como los incorporé
en la ‘Propuesta de Reforma a la Ley de Registro Civil, Identificación y
Cedulación en materia de Identidad de Género’ (R/LRCIC-IG), más
conocida como ‘Mi Género en Mi Cédula’ por la campaña audiovisual que
se lanzó en paralelo bajo el mismo nombre.1 Posteriormente, analizaré los
alcances del tipo de argumentación escogida; en particular, esa vocación
1 Redacté este proyecto de ley en mi calidad de asesora legal de los colectivos que
hoy conforman el Pacto Trans del Ecuador; una plataforma que aglutina a gran
parte del activismo trans en este país. Fue presentado en la Asamblea Nacional
del Ecuador en junio de 2012 y, tras discusión e informe favorable en el seno de la
Comisión Especializada Permanente de Gobiernos Autónomos, Descentralización,
Competencias y Organización del Territorio de la Asamblea Nacional del Ecuador
(GADS), superó exitosamente el primer debate en el pleno de la Asamblea, en sep-
tiembre de 2013.
198 Elizabeth Vásquez
[…] Cuando el cambio que se solicita sea de nombres masculinos por femeninos,
o viceversa, el funcionario de Registro Civil a cargo de la cedulación procederá, a
petición de parte, a rectificar simultáneamente el dato del género en la cédula de
identidad o cédula de identidad y ciudadanía del solicitante, sin perjuicio del sexo
que seguirá constando en su partida de nacimiento. (Ibid.: 23)
niñas y niños trans menores de 16 años; una limitación inevitable del diseño escogido.
No obstante, queda a salvo la posibilidad de emprender procesos administrativos o
judiciales en pro del reconocimiento de la identidad de género de menores de 16.
El verdadero reto, sin embargo, es pensar una legislación integral de protección que
aborde las necesidades específicas de niñas, niños y adolescentes trans.
‘Mi género en mi cédula’ 201
recicla el actual Art. 123 tal cual consta en la LRCIC vigente con una aña-
didura (texto resaltado):
Art. 123.- […].- Las instituciones […] están obligadas a aceptar la presentación o exhi-
bición de la respectiva cédula en sustitución de la partida; con la sola excepción de la
celebración de matrimonios, las actuaciones judiciales y otras que forzosamente requie-
ran de certificación o de copia autorizada de la partida de nacimiento. (Ibid.: 32–3)
[…] sus derechos (de las personas trans) se ven obstaculizados por la imposibilidad
de tener una cédula que refleje la capa más visible y exterior de su género (…). Se trata
de esa capa que la Constitución ecuatoriana protege bajo el enunciado de la libertad
estética y que la recientemente aprobada Resolución 2807 (06/2013) de la Asamblea
General de la OEA denomina expresión de género. Si tuviéramos que acudir a los
términos más clásicos del Derecho Civil, diríamos que la expresión de género es un
hecho público y notorio. (Ibid.: 2)
del Registro Civil, no fueron, ni son, posturas que aboguen por el debili-
tamiento del sexo en el orden jurídico, peor aún por su desaparición. Al
contrario, para quienes operan desde dentro del status quo de la identifi-
cación, el ‘problema’ percibido no es la situación de las personas trans – la
violación de sus derechos a la intimidad, a la identidad y a la igualdad –,
sino cómo hacer para emitir cédulas que cumplan su función de represen-
tar sin violar la Constitución flagrantemente pero, a la vez, sin trastocar el
orden jurídico tal cual existe.
‘Desexualizar’ un orden jurídico cuyas instituciones están estructu-
radas a partir del binario sexual sería trastocarlo sin duda. A lo largo de la
historia, las leyes se han formulado alrededor de la distinción básica de las
personas en ‘mujeres’ y ‘hombres’. Esto ha ocurrido ‘para bien y para mal’,
asegurando en unos momentos la incapacidad jurídica, la subordinación
y la tutela patriarcal sobre las vidas y cuerpos de las mujeres; e implemen-
tando, en otros momentos, reformas tendientes a lograr su emancipación
civil, la garantía de la igualdad sexual en los ámbitos público y privado, o
la eliminación de patrones socioculturales machistas. Si la distinción civil
entre mujeres y hombres se eliminara, múltiples preguntas jurídicas ten-
drían cabida: ¿Qué pasaría, por ejemplo, con la tipificación de delitos hoy
en día ‘sexuados’; como el femicidio, en el extremo protector, o el aborto,
en el extremo represor?¿Cómo se interpretaría la legislación electoral en
materia de paridad política entre mujeres y hombres? ¿Cómo funcionaría
la segregación por sexo de las personas privadas de libertad en el régimen
penitenciario? ¿Cómo se aplicarían las normas sobre violencia basada en
sexo y género? Y sí, también, ¿qué pasaría con ese contrato solemne entre un
hombre y una mujer llamado matrimonio (CC 2005, Art. 81) que es piedra
angular del orden sexual y reproductivo?
Esta última pregunta, la menos importante para algunas de nosotras,
ha sido ponderada con contadas excepciones como prioritaria por parte
de autoridades y dignidades del Ejecutivo y del Legislativo en cuyas manos
está la posibilidad de dar paso a una Reforma a la Ley de Registro Civil. El
gran temor, al parecer, es que cualquier reforma que modifique la ley civil
tal cual existe, tenga por efecto colateral convertir al matrimonio en una
institución ‘entre personas’ en lugar de una institución ‘entre hombre y
mujer’.
208 Elizabeth Vásquez
trans se han referido a la lucha por el género en la cédula como una condición
sine qua non para la igualdad real, o como el paso que falta para la materia-
lización de un derecho ya conquistado en el plano constitucional; esto es,
como una deuda que tiene el Estado con las personas trans. Detrás de esta
postura, un argumento práctico de enorme peso es el de que alguien tiene
que empezar por reconocer la masculinidad o feminidad de las personas
trans, y que si ese alguien no es el Estado, menos aún lo será la empleadora, la
institución educativa, el dueño de casa, o las múltiples instituciones públicas
y privadas que discriminan por identidad de género todos los días. Así lo
expresa el activista Nicanor Mora (Proyecto Transgénero – Pacto Trans),
cuando reflexiona sobre sus necesidades de salud transicional:
[…] hasta que la letra ‘F’ me puso en una situación incómoda. Me dijeron que no era
discriminación, pero que mi cédula decía que soy mujer y que tenían que tratarme
como tal. (Bravo 2013, Vídeo 3)
[…] La demanda de las personas trans de que se registre su género en su cédula pasa
por una reforma legal destinada a implementar aquello que ya es un mandato cons-
titucional […].
En cambio, la lucha jurídica de las parejas del mismo sexo por la aprobación del matri-
monio igualitario precisa […] de una reforma constitucional o una interpretación de
la Corte Constitucional al respecto. (Vásquez 2013: 33)
normar. Según qué trayectorias vitales entren en juego, las de qué sujetos
o qué colectividades, a veces normar implica reconocer, proteger y liberar,
mientras que, otras veces, normar implica reducir, controlar y oprimir.
Como proyecto de ley, ‘Mi Género en Mi Cédula’ no escapa de esta ten-
sión. Sin embargo, intenta presentar innovaciones que, finalmente, recojan
ese anhelo de una vivencia más soberana del género por parte de las per-
sonas trans, y de todas las personas. Lo hace abrazando, en vez de negar,
la aparición inevitable de múltiples niveles de relación entre las personas,
tan concretas, y las normas, tan abstractas; y de múltiples niveles de inter-
pretación frente a una misma norma.
Así, ‘Mi Género en Mi Cédula’ puede ser leída como una propuesta
tan convencional que no logra abolir el sexo, ni tampoco escapar del bina-
rio; pero tan rupturista, a la vez, que desmonopoliza la masculinidad y la
feminidad, como ya se explicó, permitiendo que no sólo los hombres, sino
también otras personas masculinas porten una ‘M’ en su cédula, y que no
sólo las mujeres, sino también otras personas femeninas, porten una ‘F’.
‘Mi Género en Mi Cédula’ puede también ser leída como una pro-
puesta tan asimilacionista que hace posible que quien así lo desee guarde
su partida de nacimiento bajo siete llaves y conduzca su vida civil con su
cédula como ‘cualquier otra mujer’ o ‘cualquier otro hombre’; pero tan
diferenciadora, a la vez, que permite que quien no se sienta ‘hombre’ o
‘mujer’ pueda definirse como ‘una persona de sexo femenino y de género
masculino’ o viceversa.8
Por último, la propuesta ser leída como un diseño civil tan clásico
que reitera otro binario instituido por el Derecho Romano; el de la nítida
distinción entre las esfera pública y privada que el feminismo ha superado
ampliamente. Pero, simultáneamente, tal vez la propuesta es tan actual
y de vanguardia que, valiéndose precisamente de ese binario, otorga un
lugar tan público al género que refuerza el ejercicio del ‘libre desarrollo
de la personalidad’ y un lugar tan privado al sexo, en la esfera de la íntima
corporalidad, que, en alguna medida, lo saca de circulación. Y que, aún en
otra medida, ayuda a posicionar el derecho a la intimidad en esa esfera de
los derechos sexuales y reproductivos en que tanta falta hace su invocación
contra las injerencias patriarcales que sufren los cuerpos femeninos y trans.
Quiero, para finalizar, regresar a la simpleza del adagio de apertura.
Si en Derecho se deshace como se hace, entonces tal vez la mejor manera
de abolir las categorías del sexo y del género sea usándolas. Si algo genera
familiaridad, reflexión, confrontación y la eventual aparición de nuevas
perspectivas es el uso. Un uso reivindicativo del género bien podría dar lugar
a otra vieja figura civil, la del desuso, que es la muerte por obsolescencia. Y
es que, mientras más aterrizadas y cotidianas se presenten las instituciones
jurídicas, más factible será que cuando su abolición honestamente quiera
plantearse, la sociedad repare en que, en los hechos, ésta ya se produjo.
Referencias
Constitución de la República del Ecuador (CE), Registro Oficial No. 449 (20 de
octubre de 2008) <http://www.asambleanacional.gob.ec/documentos/consti-
tucion_de_bolsillo.pdf> fecha de acceso: 21 de febrero de 2015.
De Santo, V. (1995). Diccionario de Derecho Procesal. Buenos Aires: Editorial
Universidad.
Devis Echandía, H. (2002). Teoría general de la prueba judicial / Tomo I. Bogotá:
Temis, 5a. edición.
Dickson, S. y Sanders, S. (2015). ‘India, Nepal, and Pakistan: A Unique South Asian
Constitutional Discourse on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity’. Social Diffe-
rence and Constitutionalism in Pan-Asia, Cambridge Books Online. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 316–47 <http://law.indiana.edu/lawlibrary/servi-
ces/bibliography/doc/Sanders3_000.pdf> fecha de acceso: 24 de febrero de 2015.
Ley de Registro Civil, Identificación y Cedulación de la República del Ecuador,
(LRCIC) Registro Oficial No. 70 (21 de abril de 1976) <http://www.registro-
civil.gob.ec/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2014/01/este-es-02-ley-de-crea-
ción.pdf> fecha de acceso: 21 de febrero de 2015.
Ley 26.743 (Ley de Identidad de Género) de la Nación Argentina (23 de mayo de 2012),
<http://www.infoleg.gov.ar/infolegInternet/anexos/195000-199999/197860/
norma.htm> fecha de acceso: 21 de febrero de 2015.
Mora, N. (2014). ‘Intervención en ‘Identidad de Género para el Buen Vivir’’, Campaña
Audiovisual Mi Género en Mi Cédula, Vídeo No. 6 <https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=UdL0Zd87U3Y> fecha de acceso: 21 de febrero de 2015.
Olsen, F. (1990). ‘The Sex of Law’. En D. Kayris (ed.), The Politics of Law: A Progressive
Critique, pp. 452–7. Nueva York: Phanteon.
Recasens Siches, L. (1939). Vida Humana, Sociedad y Derecho. México, DF: Fondo
de Cultura Económica.
Rodríguez, D. (2012). Intervención en Campaña Audiovisual Mi Género en Mi Cédula,
Vídeo No. 1 (Introducción) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD8h9H1U-
jac> fecha de acceso: 21 de febrero de 2015.
Taylor, C. (1993). El multiculturalismo y la ‘política del reconocimiento’. México, DF:
Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Vásquez, E. (2010). ‘Manifiesto Ecuatoriano del Octubre Trans’. En F. Davis y M. A.
López (eds), Dossier Micropolíticas Cuir: Transmariconizando el Sur, Ramón 99,
pp. 15–19. Buenos Aires: Revista de Artes Visuales Ramona.
Vásquez, E. (2013). ‘Si es Mi Cédula, tiene que ser Mi Género’, Propuesta de Reformas
a la Ley de Registro Civil en Materia de Identidad de Género (Documento de Sus-
tentación y articulado comentado). Quito: Proyecto Transgénero, 2013. Versión
online: <http://issuu.com/transfeministas/docs/mig__neroenmic__dula/0>
fecha de acceso: 21 de febrero de 2015.
Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez
1 Por sistema patriarcal moderno entendemos, siguiendo a Rosa Cobo, quien a su vez
se basa en la noción de patriarcado fraterno de Carol Pateman, un ordenamiento
de relaciones de poder en el cual los hombres han pactado como hermanos (con-
trato), acudiendo como fuente de legitimidad a un estado natural (en los términos
de Rousseau) en el que las mujeres y los hombres tienen destinos naturales distintos
e inalterables: el hombre en la esfera pública, la mujer en la esfera privada. (Cobo,
1995) Si bien reconocemos que notables cambios sociales se han dado desde la segunda
mitad del siglo XX a la fecha, en términos de la emancipación de las mujeres, también
es preciso reconocer que los beneficios de estas transformaciones han tocado a pocas
mujeres en el mundo, y la mayoría sigue aun enfrentándose a las formas de opresión
patriarcales más brutales, como es el femicidio. En este sistema patriarcal moderno las
violencias se intersecan y se ejercen sobre los cuerpos, a través de las construcciones
sexo/genéricas, étnico-raciales, etáreas, de carácter migratorio, etc.
216 Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez
La forma principal en que la mujer hebrea podía ser valorada era teniendo hijos, por
lo que su peor desgracia era la esterilidad, que recaía sobre la instancia divina quien
tenía el poder de otorgarla o retirarla. Así, tal y como recoge el Antiguo Testamento,
Sara, Rebeca, Ana o Raquel fueron condenadas con el castigo de la infertilidad. Raquel
2 No todos los hombres en igualdad de condiciones, pues también hay una jerarquía
de valor que define cuáles hombres son más fuertes o poderosos. Sin embargo, las
mujeres, dentro de los espacios en los que estuviesen, ocupaban un lugar social infe-
rior al de los hombres
Cuerpos oprimidos de la modernidad in extremis 217
no pudo concebir durante muchos años, por lo que su marido, Jacob, tuvo dos hijos
varones con la sirvienta y también esposa Bilhah, mientras Raquel suplicaba a su
Dios: ‘Dame hijos, o si no, me muero’ (Génesis, 30: 1). (Burgaleta Pérez 2011: 20–1)
conducta de otros animales. Así, la anatomía y la fisiología son tomadas como excusa
para la imposición, so pena de la censura moral, de un rol de género y de unas tareas
sociales (cuidado, alimentación, educación de las crías). (Blaffer Hrdy, 1999). Al
haberse asentado esta noción en el discurso hegemónico y en los sentidos sociales
compartidos, se dogmatiza, se sacraliza y emerge como verdad. Por esta razón resulta
tan repudiable y despierta pánico moral social, el caso de las mujeres que abortan, que
abandonan a las crías o que les dan muerte al nacer o a los pocos meses (infanticidio).
Estos actos son vistos como antinaturales y monstruosos. (Caamaño & Rangel, 2002)
4 Mencionamos, como un ejemplo, las controversias suscitadas por algunas afirmaciones
de ciertos pioneros de la sociobiología, como es el caso de E. O. Wilson con su libro
Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, publicado en 1975, que fue duramente criticado por
activistas y académicos que los consideraron apologético del racismo y el sexismo.
5 En palabras de Engels: ‘La forma de familia que corresponde a la civilización y vence
definitivamente con ella es la monogamia, la supremacía del hombre sobre la mujer,
y la familia individual como unidad económica de la sociedad. La fuerza cohesiva
de la sociedad civilizada la constituye el Estado, que, en todos los períodos típicos,
es exclusivamente el Estado de la clase dominante y, en todos los casos, una máquina
esencialmente destinada a reprimir a la clase oprimida y explotada’. (p. 102)
Cuerpos oprimidos de la modernidad in extremis 219
se engarza con el interés del Estado moderno por aumentar la tasa de nata-
lidad: ‘Cada niño será considerado fuerza de trabajo y eventual soldado’.
En un contexto de masivas pérdidas económicas, producto de las guerras
libradas durante el siglo XVIII, la alerta demográfica se había encendido.
No era posible hacer frente a esta situación sin acudir al mito de la mater-
nidad como destino.
Adrienne Rich, en su fundacional libro ‘Of Woman Born’ (1986: 43), explica
que:
El patriarcado pareciera requerir, no solo que las mujeres deban asumir la mayor
carga de dolor y auto-negación para el avance de la especie, sino que una mayoría de
esa especie –las mujeres– deba mantenerse esencialmente excluida de la posibilidad
de cuestionar y de adquirir conocimiento. De este ‘subempleo’ de la conciencia de
las mujeres depende la moralidad y la vida emocional de toda la familia humana.
6 La tradición judía impone una separación absoluta entre hombre y mujer unidos en
matrimonio, cuando la mujer está menstruando y hasta 7 días después de que acaba
el ciclo. Esta ley se llama Taharat HaMishpacha, que en español sería ‘ley de la pureza
familiar’. (Gardin, 1988)
7 Desde la crítica post-estructuralista se ha señalado que el pensamiento occidental
moderno se caracteriza por su binarismo, por una tendencia plantear cualquier pro-
blema en términos dicotómicos.
Cuerpos oprimidos de la modernidad in extremis 221
9 Reiteramos que son ciertas mujeres las que toman estas decisiones. En Costa Rica se
observa un notorio contraste entre la tasa de natalidad promedio del Valle Central y
la tasa de natalidad en zonas costeras, por ejemplo.
10 Si bien el INEC confirma que Costa Rica continúa en su camino hacia la inversión
de la pirámide poblacional, debido a la disminución sostenida de la tasa de natalidad,
también el último censo arroja el dato de que la tasa de natalidad es mayor al prome-
dio nacional en zonas costeras, como Limón y Puntarenas. Pueden consultarse los
datos del más reciente censo en <http://www.inec.go.cr/Web/Home/pagPrincipal.
aspx>.
Cuerpos oprimidos de la modernidad in extremis 223
11 Entendemos el concepto de mito según los términos de Roland Barthes: ‘él (el mito)
transforma la historia en naturaleza. Entonces se comprende por qué, a los ojos del
consumidor de mitos, la intención, la argumentación ad hominem del concepto,
puede permanecer manifiesta sin que parezca, sin embargo, interesada: la causa que
hace proferir el habla mítica es perfectamente explícita, pero de inmediato queda con-
vertida en naturaleza; no es leída como móvil sino como razón’. (Barthes, 1957/1999,
pp. 120–1)
12 Sacred call le denomina Adrienne Rich.
224 Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez
Apenas pasada la primera década del Siglo XXI, este mercado se transformó
en un sistema de negocios transnacional, caracterizado por la desregulación,
la privatización y la desigualdad. En un taller de especialistas realizado en el
2010 en la University of Cambridge, se debatió acerca de las problemáticas
Cuerpos oprimidos de la modernidad in extremis 227
generadas por este mercado y sobre los vacíos que prevalecen en la inves-
tigación empírica y teórica al respecto. Los cuidados reproductivos trans-
nacionales (cross-border reproductive care, como se le denomina en inglés)
constituyen un fenómeno que interseca el turismo, los negocios, el dere-
cho y la medicina. Recibe también otras denominaciones como ‘turismo
reproductivo’ y denota el traslado de personas de una jurisdicción a otra,
con el objetivo de acceder a tratamientos para la infertilidad, incluyendo
la FIV (Gürtin & Inhorn 2011).
Según Gürtin & Inhorn, las razones por las que se produce este flujo
de personas a través de las fronteras son: 1) prohibiciones legales y religio-
sas, 2) consideraciones económicas, 3) preocupaciones sobre la calidad y
la seguridad y 4) preferencias personales. La decisión de acudir a otro país
para acceder a alguna forma de tecnología reproductiva es resultado de un
proceso complejo, marcado por una necesidad percibida de terminar el
sufrimiento físico y social producido por la infertilidad (2011: 535).
Para algunos países destino, tal situación ha generado un apoyo nacio-
nal a las industrias del ‘turismo reproductivo’, que ofrecen empleos y divisas.
La República Checa, España, Tailandia e India se cuentan entre algunos
de los países que más reciben este tipo de viajeros y viajeras. Ya sea por la
facilidad económica, por la posibilidad de realizar algunos procedimientos
que son prohibidos en el país de origen, para adquirir óvulos de mujeres
con características especiales o bien por la facilidad para encontrar mujeres
saludables dispuestas a llevar a término un embarazo por contrato, estos
países han desarrollado ya complejas industrias de servicios reproductivos,
que incluyen a profesionales en medicina, derecho, psicología, genética,
así como agencias de viajes, traductores y contactos políticos (2011: 536).
Tal y como Donna Dickenson expusiera en su libro ‘Body Shopping:
the Economy fuelled by Flesh and Blood’, el mercado de órganos, tejidos y
células crece rápidamente en todo el mundo y desdibuja los límites sobre
lo que puede ser vendido o no. En la India se ha consolidado una industria
de servicios reproductivos de grandes proporciones, asociada al ámbito del
turismo médico. En una investigación realizada entre los años 2008 a 2010,
las investigadoras Sarojini, Marwah y Shenoi detectaron que las tasas de
éxito de las clínicas de FIV se exageran y, en ausencia de estándares mínimos
y de control estatal, es casi imposible obtener datos confiables. En el año
228 Gabriela Arguedas Ramírez
Medicalización y consumo
Según Conrad & Leiter (2004) durante las últimas tres décadas hemos
experimentado un aumento en la medicalización de la sociedad. Para espe-
cificar qué entienden por medicalización, retoman la definición de Clarke
Referencias
Habbema, J., Collins, J., Leridon, H., Evers, J., Lunefeld, B., y Velde, E. (2004). Towards
less confusing terminology in reproductive medicine: a proposal. Human Repro-
duction, 20(2), 1497–501.
Harvey, D. (1990). The Condition of Postmodernity. An Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change. Cambridge: Blackwell.
Jayaprakasan, K., Herbert, M., Moody, E., Stewart, J., y Murdoch, A. (2007). Estima-
ting the risks of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS): implications for
egg donation for research. Human Fertility, 183–7.
Jenkins, J., Daya, S., Kremer, J., Balasch, J., Barrat, C., & Cooke. (2004). European Clas-
sification of Infertility Taskforce (ECIT) response to Habbema et al., ‘Towards
less confusing terminology in reproductive medicine: a proposal’. Human Repro-
duction, 10(3), 2687–88.
Lerner, G. (1986). The Creation of Patriarchy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mata Blanco, A. (31 de marzo de 2013). Madres primerizas, a un paso de los cuarenta.
Revista Dominical < http://wfnode01.nacion.com/2013-03-31/RevistaDomini-
cal/Madres-primerizas--a-un-paso-de-los-cuarenta.aspx?subsection=>.
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tocols and egg banking. American Journa of Bioethics, 11(9), 33–5.
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insurance coverage for in vitro fertilization in the United States. A Review. The
Journal of Reproductive Medicine, 54(11–12), 661–8.
Pateman, C. (1988). The Sexual Contract. San Francisco: Stanford University Press.
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principles in transplant and fertility tourism. Reproductive BioMedicine Online,
23(5), 634–41.
Pisano, M. (2004). El triunfo de la masculinidad. Chile: Fem-e-libros/creatividad
feminista.
Puleo, A. (1992). Dialéctica de la sexualidad. Género y sexo en la filosofía contemporánea.
Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra.
Rich, A. (1986). Of Woman Born. Motherhood as Experience and Institution. New
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Rousseau, J.-J. (1762/1998). Emilio, o de la educación. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Rutstein, S., y Shah, I. (2004). DHS Comparative Reports No. 9. Infecundity, Infertility
and Childlessness in Developing Countries. Geneva: World Health Organization.
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assisted reproductive technologies in India. Globalization and Health, 1–27.
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of conception. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Cuerpos oprimidos de la modernidad in extremis 237
On May 17th, 2001, at the end of his weekly column about sex and relation-
ship advice in the US newspaper The Stranger, North American journalist
Dan Savage asked, ‘What should we call it when a woman fucks a man
in the ass with a strap-on dildo?’ The following week, in his May 24th
column titled ‘Let’s Vote!’, Savage, after having rejected several suggestions,
invited his readers to vote for one of three remaining terms via email. The
options were: (1) to bob, an allusion to a series of videos known as Bend
Over Boyfriend (B.O.B.), which show the aforementioned sexual practice
without giving it a specific name; (2) to punt, normally referring either to
a manner of kicking a ball or, in nautical terms, a way of propelling a boat
with a pole; and (3) to peg, inspired from stories about British male pros-
titutes inserting wooden pegs into their anuses in order to remain dilated
between clients. Savage originally rejected this last term due to his doubts
about the veracity of the story and in order not to offend his aunt, named
Peg; however, he eventually threw it into the mix due to its brevity and
percussive sonority. Approximately one month later, in a column published
on June 21st, 2001, Savage announced that he had received an unexpectedly
high volume of votes: 12,103 in total. To the journalist’s great chagrin, his
preferred term, bob, came in in last place, with 22.5% of the votes. In second
242 Elizabeth Sara Lewis
place came punt, with 34.5%. The winner, Savage announced, begging his
aunt’s forgiveness, was peg, with 43%. The verb to peg was accompanied by
other terms: pegger, the woman who penetrates the man; peggee, the man
who is penetrated; and pegging, the noun to designate the practice.
Why give a name to the sexual practice of a woman penetrating a man
in the anus with a strap-on-dildo? In Savage’s May 24th column, in a mes-
sage supporting the use of the term punt, a reader calling herself ‘Positively
Uninhibited Newly Turned-on Effeminate Radical’ (or P.U.N.T.E.R.) made
the importance of naming clear:
When you first suggested a term be coined for a sexual act that SPECIFICALLY
applied to a woman doing something to a man, I wondered why we had to be so
specific. After all, the terms fucking or fisting or kissing don’t specify the gender of
the actors. Then I saw the advantage. My husband (like most straight men) can’t
break the connection between being fucked in the ass and being gay--but a gender-
specific term might help! If you’re gay and another man is fucking you in the ass,
he isn’t PUNTING you. You have to be straight to get punted. A woman has to do
the job. I vote punt!
3 I use the term ‘sexuality identity’ rather than ‘sexual orientation’ to highlight my
perspective that the categories we use to refer to sexualities are identity performances
that are discursive, historically situated, socio-cultural constructions, rather than
biological facts.
244 Elizabeth Sara Lewis
[i]t is a rather amazing fact that, of the very many dimensions along which the
genital activity of one person can be differentiated from that of another (dimen-
sions that include preference for certain acts, certain zones or sensations, certain
physical types, a certain frequency, certain symbolic investments, certain relations
of age or power, a certain species, a certain number of participants, etc. etc. etc.),
precisely one, the gender of object choice, emerged from the turn of the century,
and has remained, as the dimension denoted by the now ubiquitous category of
‘sexual orientation.’ (1990: 8)
right person), saying ‘I now declare you husband and wife!’ to a hetero-
sexual couple during a marriage ceremony in a city hall or religious venue
(the right circumstances), after the couple has said their vows (the right
moment), thus realizing the act of marriage. After this initial distinction
between constatives and performatives, as well as various failed attempts
to subdivide the latter category, Austin arrived at the revolutionary con-
clusion that
there is no purely verbal criterion by which to distinguish the performative from the
constative utterance, and that the constative is liable to the same unhappinesses as the
performative. Now we must ask ourselves whether issuing a constative utterance is not,
after all, the performance of an act, the act, namely, of stating. […] [O]ne can’t issue
any utterance whatever without performing some speech-act of this kind. (1971: 20)
whose narratives we shall analyze shortly), they seem to coincide with the
heterosexual matrix: their ‘biological’ sex aligns with their gender identity,
and they experience desire for women. However, the type of sexual practice
they enjoy – being penetrated anally using dildos – is viewed by heteronor-
mative society as a ‘homosexual’ and ‘not masculine’ act. As Butler in inter-
view with Prins and Meijer (1998) reminds us, people can be seen as ‘abject’
for a variety of reasons, many of which go beyond the sex-gender-sexuality
alignment of the heteronormative matrix. I do not deny that peggees may
enjoy, for lack of a better term, some ‘heterosexual privileges’ and not be seen
as abject beings as long as they keep their preference for anal stimulation
‘closeted’. However, I am interested in the opportunities studying pegging
may offer for fighting the rigidity of the heteronormative matrix in order
to make possible a wider range of identity performances and sexual expe-
riences for everyone – chipping away not only at the hidden homosexual
norm in Queer Studies, but at the confining heteronormative matrix as well.
Unfortunately, however, it is not possible to destroy the heteronor-
mative matrix and begin again from scratch. This does not mean, though,
that we are trapped, incapable of action, doomed to repeat the same words
and practices over and over again; we can indeed make changes, and this is
due to human agency and the workings of the repetitions in performative
processes themselves. For Butler,
[i]f the ground of gender identity is the stylized repetition of acts through time, and
not a seemingly seamless identity, then the possibilities of gender transformation are
to be found in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a different
sort of repeating, in the breaking or subversive repetition of that style. (1988: 520)
[n]arrative performance thus refers to a site of struggle over personal and social
identity rather than to the acts of a self with a fixed, unified, stable, or final essence
which serves as the origin or accomplishment of experience […]. From the perspec-
tive of performance and performativity, the analysis of narrative is not only semantic,
engaging the interpretation of meanings, but must also be pragmatic: analyzing the
struggle over meanings and the conditions and consequences of telling a story in a
particular way. (Langellier 2001: 151)
Over the last few decades, the internet has presented innumerous possi-
bilities for new connections and social interactions. It offers new ways for
individuals to perform different identities and creates opportunities for
Pegging, masculinities and heterosexualities 251
new sexual possibilities (Russell 2011) or for older ‘taboo’ practices that
used to be invisibilized. As Moita Lopes observes,
This chapter takes a look at some narrative aspects of this ‘new’ social life,
analyzing social interactions in two different virtual spaces.
The first is the aforementioned column of sex and relationship advice,
called ‘Savage Love’, written by North American journalist Dan Savage.
Since 1991, the column has been published weekly in various newspapers,
mainly in the USA and Canada, but also in Europe and Asia, and is also
available online (<http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove>),
with the possibility for readers anywhere to post comments. Savage identi-
fies as gay and uses his column to express his opinions and reject conserva-
tive, normative visions about sexual and affective relations. In the column,
Savage generally publishes a few questions sent in by his readers via post or
e-mail and offers his advice. Sometimes, as was the case with the topic of
pegging, he invites his readers to write to him regarding a particular issue.
This chapter focuses on the interactions between Savage and his readers,
published on the 24th of May and the 21st of June, 2001, during the process
of choosing the name ‘pegging’ (see introduction).
The second virtual space is an online community (or ‘tribe’, in emic
terms) called ‘Pegging 101’, for people interested in pegging (<http://tribes.
tribe.net/pegging101>). It was created on August 9th, 2007, by a moderator
with the username ‘Ruby’. According to the moderator, in her initial post
describing the community, its purpose is to raise public awareness about
‘sensual pegging’ (i.e. pegging unrelated to BDSM practices), to combat
the stigmatization of the practice and for users to share their experiences.
As such, we can consider the community a space for telling alternative sto-
ries and realizing a narrative politics (Threadgold 2005). With regards to
252 Elizabeth Sara Lewis
in an essential way. From then on, ‘you are’ a fudge packer, an ass bandit, a
fag’ (2011: 17). Fortunately, Savage responded to the comment in a direct,
dry and decisive way, exposing the reader’s prejudice and faulty logic of
equating sexual acts with sexuality identity: ‘Sorry, T[ruthful] H[etero],
if a straight woman is doing it to a straight man, it’s hetero sex, however
uncomfortable it might make some insecure little pricks’.
However, how can we explain this ideological association and the
prejudiced attitudes related to it? First, we need to contemplate how
ideas about masculinity and heterosexuality are constructed, naturalized,
essencialized and, especially, linked together. As we saw earlier, a boy only
becomes a boy (and a man) over time, through a continuous series of per-
formative acts within a matrix of constraints that insist that he perform
a certain type of (hegemonic) masculinity – a performance of masculine
gender that aligns with his ‘biological’ sex and the desire for persons of the
‘other’ sex. The ‘definition, acquisition and maintaining [of masculinity]
constitutes a fragile social process that is monitored, self-monitored and
disputed’ (Almeida 1996: n.p.). As Almeida affirms,
hegemonic masculinity is an idealized cultural model that, as it cannot be attained by
practically any man, exercises a controlling effect over all men, through the embodi-
ment and the ritualization of daily practices of sociability and of a discursivity that
excludes an entire field of emotions considered feminine. ([1995] 2000: 17)
I am your typical straight Joe. But after an old girlfriend started sticking her fingers
up my ass, I was on a slippery slope. By the time we broke up she was pounding my
ass like a pro. I have had some of the best orgasms of my life that way. Believe me,
boys, convincing your new girlfriend to stick something up your ass is a lot harder
than actually taking something up your ass.
The reader begins his narrative affirming his normality and hetero-
sexuality through the use of the name ‘Joe’, a very common first name
in English-speaking countries that suggests that he is a normal, average
person, an idea he reinforces with the adjectives ‘typical’ and ‘straight’.
Afterwards, he establishes clearly the role of a woman in his first expe-
riences of anal pleasure, before alluding to (through the use of the verb
‘pounding’, which suggests the use of an object such as a dildo) the act of
pegging. As Gustavson (2009: 410) observes, ‘heterosexuality consists not
only in a binary gendered order, but more importantly in the performance
of normality’. By establishing a link between the practice of pegging and
normality and heterosexuality, implicitly rejecting accusations of taking
part in an ‘abnormal’, ‘homosexual’ practice, the narrator redelineates the
borders of normalcy and of what constitutes performances of normality.
Pegging, masculinities and heterosexualities 255
‘Finally I felt the need to tell her if she implied I was gay one more time …’
In the Pegging 101 community, on June 28th, 2012, the moderator, Ruby,
opened a new discussion thread, titled ‘A Question for the Gentlemen’,
with the following query:
If you have already explored pegging a little (or a lot) … after the first few times did
you feel like you wanted to somehow reaffirm your masculinity? That being pegged
by your partner has somehow caused you to doubt your manliness a bit? Did you
go through any emotions similar to this?
about masculinity, as Ruby had asked – showing once more the strong
ideological association between masculinity and heterosexuality.4 One of
these men was the user Mike, whose profile says he was 59 years old at the
time of writing and lives in Texas, USA, and whose profile pictures show
him to be white. On July 11th, 2012, Mike wrote:
Actually after a few times, less than ten it was my partner that started doubting my
hetero … ness. She just started building up in her head that maybe it was something
else I truely [sic] wanted and she was becoming more insecure or more sure I wanted
something else. Or someone else. What I was enjoying was painful to her. […] I mean
she was young to be same age as me. Well I had been around the world and off to
war and she left home for the college dorm and back home to teach. Still a little bit
daddy’s girl. Finally I felt the need to tell her if she implied I was gay one more time
I would injure her oral cavity. Guess that was macho enough for her. By the way, i
[sic] would never, in anger, hit any woman.
4 A few months and almost forty responses later, on January 8th, 2013, the moderator
observed, ‘I find it interesting how many men in this thread took ‘lack of masculin-
ity’ or ‘doubting your manliness’ and went straight to gay or bisexual. Because that’s
really not what I meant. I really did just mean doubting your masculinity – not your
orientation’.
Pegging, masculinities and heterosexualities 257
dynamic and multiple ways, and their positionings can confirm norma-
tive gender performances or destabilize them. With regards to discursive
performances of masculinities in particular, Connell and Messerschmidt
highlight the fact that
[m]en can dodge among multiple meanings according to their interactional needs.
Men can adopt hegemonic masculinity when it is desirable; but the same men can
distance themselves strategically from hegemonic masculinity at other moments.
Consequently, ‘masculinity’ represents not a certain type of man but, rather, a way
that men position themselves through discursive practices. (2005: 841)
‘It took years for me to figure out that I’m not actually attracted to guys …’
Hi everybody. I guess I should stop being shy and introduce myself. I’m a married
otherwise typical construction guy next door with a few kinks. I’ve identified as Bi
258 Elizabeth Sara Lewis
since my teens but it took years for me to figure out that I’m not actually attracted to
guys but to anal stimulation. […] When I was younger I had no idea anal play could
be with anyone besides Bi or Gay guys but I wish I had known of at least SOME
ladies into pegging guys. And the male ego kept me from looking for other options …
so I quietly went insane with lust until I gave in and had another encounter with
a guy. And never really got satisfied … now I know it’s not what the guy did or did
not do … it’s that I still wanted to be sexual with a female even when I wanted [to
be] pegged. […]
Like the reader ‘In Touch with My Anal Side’ from Savage’s column,
this anonymous member of the Pegging 101 community presents himself
as an average person: he is married to a woman, he is part of the working
class (a ‘construction guy’ – a profession ideologically associated with
masculinity), and he’s a typical ‘guy next door’, an allusion to the expres-
sion ‘boy next door’, used to describe a youth who is friendly, helpful and
polite. The substitution of ‘boy’ with ‘guy’ suggests that the user is an adult,
but with the same qualities.
After constructing himself as a normal, average man, he tells a narrative
about his experiences with anal stimulation. He explains that he identifies
or identified as bisexual,5 but that over time he has come to understand
that he had confused his enjoyment of anal stimulation with sexual desire
for men, showing once again the strength of the ideological association
between men’s anal pleasure and male homosexuality. By telling about
how he had sexual relations involving anal stimulation with men, without
experiencing sexual satisfaction despite generally enjoying this type of
stimulus, the user begins to break the ideological link between men’s anal
pleasure and homosexuality (or bisexuality) as he narrates his personal
5 The identity category used in this narrative seems to present a contradiction with
the narrator’s description of his desire. In the phrase ‘I’ve identified as Bi since my
teens’, the use of the present perfect tense suggests that the narrator still identifies as
bisexual today. However, throughout the rest of the narrative, he supports his claim
to how he is ‘not actually attracted to guys but to anal stimulation’. From the discourse
available, it is impossible to tell if he currently identifies as heterosexual but used to
identity as bisexual, or if he still identifies as bisexual due to his past experiences with
men or his enjoyment of pegging.
Pegging, masculinities and heterosexualities 259
Final considerations
Although many sexual practices and gender and sexuality identity per-
formances previously seen as ‘deviant’ are now being discussed in the
media and daily conversation as ‘legitimate’ possibilities approved by
society (Moita Lopes 2006a), the practice of pegging, in which a woman
penetrates a man’s anus using a strap-on dildo, is still often the object of
prejudiced attitudes. In heteronormative society, there operates a strong
ideological association between men’s anal pleasure and male homosexu-
ality, although all men have the potential to enjoy anal stimulation and
despite the fact that taking part in certain sexual practices is different from
identifying with a certain label and realizing a certain identity performance.
According to Moita Lopes, in order to diminish inequalities and preju-
diced attitudes we must ‘question narratives that hinder our experiences
260 Elizabeth Sara Lewis
References
—— ([1990] 1999). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity 2nd ed.
New York and London: Routledge.
—— (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York and
London: Routledge.
—— (1997). Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Routledge.
—— (1999). ‘Performativity’s Social Magic’. In R. Shustermann (ed.), Bourdieu: A
Critical Reader, pp. 113–28. Oxford: Blackwell.
—— (2004). Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge.
—— (2009). ‘Performativity, precarity and sexual politics’, AIBR: Revista de Antro-
pología Iberoamericana, 4(3), i–xiii.
Butler, J., Prins, B. and Meijer, I. C. (1998). ‘How Bodies Come to Matter: An Inter-
view with Judith Butler’, Signs, 23(2), 275–86.
Connell, R. W. and Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethink-
ing the Concept’, Gender and Society, 19(6), 829–59.
Derrida, J. (1972). ‘Signature, événement, contexte’. In J. Derrida (ed.), Marges de la
philosophie, pp. 365–93. Paris: Éditions de Minuit.
Erickson-Schroth, L. and Mitchell, J. (2009). ‘Queering Queer Theory, or Why Bisexu-
ality Matters’, Journal of Bisexuality, 9(3–4), 297–315.
Gustavson, M. (2009). ‘Bisexuals in Relationships: Uncoupling Intimacy from Gender
Ontology’, Journal of Bisexuality, 9(3–4), 407–29.
Langellier, K. M. (2001). ‘“You’re marked”: Breast cancer, tattoo, and the narrative
performance of identity’. In J. Brockmeir and D. Carbaugh, (eds), Narrative and
identity: Studies in autobiography, self and culture, pp. 145–84. Amsterdam and
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Lawler, S. (2002). ‘Narrative in Social Research’. In T. May (ed.). Qualitative Research
in Action, pp. 242–58. London: Sage.
Moita Lopes, L. P. da (2006a). ‘“Falta homem até pra homem”: a construção da mas-
culinidade no discurso midiático’. In V. M. Heberle, A. C. Ostermann, and D.
de C. Figueiredo (eds), Linguagem e gênero no trabalho, na mídia e em outros
contextos, pp. 151–7. Florianópolis: Editora da UFSC.
—— (2006b). ‘On Being White, Heterosexual and Male at School: Multiple
Positionings in Oral Narrativas’. In D. Schiffrin, A. De Fina, and M. Bam-
berg (eds), Identity and Discourse, pp. 288–313. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
—— (2008). ‘Gêneros e sexualidades nas práticas discursivas contemporâneas:
desafios em tempos queer’. In A. Pádua (ed.), Identidades de gênero e práticas
discursivas, pp. 13–20. Campina Grande: Editora da Universidade Estadual da
Paraíba
Pegging, masculinities and heterosexualities 263
So when I arrived in Jo’burg,1 my two sisters said to me: ‘why don’t you get someone,
a man/boyfriend for yourself because you are also a woman (her own emphasis)’, so
then I was forced to look for a boyfriend that will help me with my problems. So
that is when I met my son’s father.
such as food, clothing and shelter. This ideal relies on and supports tacit
and pre-existing norms and beliefs that promote gendered stereotypes of
men as financial providers for women and children (Swartz and Bhana
2009). Furthermore, it maintains the belief that women must be sexually
available to men (Yusuf 2007); this particular notion being self-evident
in the statement ‘you are also a woman’. Meaning engaging in a hetero-
sexual relationship as a woman is seen as an acceptable way for ensuring
that one is able to survive and meet their basic needs. Thus this assump-
tion about gender roles further illustrates the normative expectations of
women as needing to be provided for financially in hegemonic hetero-
sexual relationships.
On the other hand some young men unquestionably accepts the
socially constructed gender roles of women as the primary people respon-
sible for house work. In the narrative below a young man forcefully argues
that gender roles must be adhered to no matter the changing circumstances:
A woman must be a woman (his emphasis), and she must show that she is a woman by
cooking for her man in the kitchen, even if I am not working. It does not mean that
because I am not working I must cook for a woman. Okay what I can do is because
we stay in a shack, I can boil water for her so that when she comes back from work
she can find water prepared for her to cook. Not even every day, I will do it when I
come five minutes earlier than her. And this can’t happen every day. A woman must
remain a woman, she must do all the domestic work in the house and I will do what
I am supposed to do. Because if we come home and the roof of the house is damaged
I don’t expect her to fix it but I will fix the roof. It is incorrect for her to get up the
roof and fix it. I can’t allow that.
also linked to racial ideas and to the notion of a proper masculinity and
femininity. The young man further explained that:
You see in many family gatherings a girl is a girl, let’s take Xhosa traditions for example.
For us as Xhosa man we take man as man, and boys as boys and women as women.
Let’s say there is a lesbian who is sitting with us and we are serious men and we trying
to put something together. We will tell the lesbian, let’s say it’s you Memory to excuse
us because we are speaking something that serious with the males only. Even if you
can dress like a man and behave like a man, it does not matter. We will ask her to
leave us. Even when we sitting in the kraal and eating meat she won’t be allowed,
and she can’t even ask for anything, because she does not exist.
The young man here delineates black Xhosa men from men of other
races and cultures, therefore racialized gender norms can be seen as effec-
tive in reproducing patriarchal gender relations. In this account a ‘real’
black Xhosa man exists by adhering strictly to the expected gender roles.
This demonstrates that heterosexual identities are not given and fixed but
are constructed, sustained and reproduced through repeated and stylized
performances (Butler 1993). Gender roles that are associated with hetero-
sexual practice intersect with the black Xhosa way of understanding the
differences between men and women. In the black Xhosa culture, according
to this young man, men, women and boys are seen as different and are thus
treated differently. A woman or man who decides not to identify with the
gender of her ‘sex’ simply does not exist. In other words if a person looks
physically like a woman but behaves like a man through their clothing and
the way they express themselves, the black Xhosa culture subjugates them
by not acknowledging their existence, and in a sense they live in a perma-
nent state of nonexistence. Race and gender are intimately tied here and
work to deny existence to those who do not practice their expected gender.
Here it can be seen that race, class and gender produce and regulate
the heterosexual subject. These social vectors intersect to construct mul-
tiple oppressions that impact heterosexual identities. This suggests that
seeing beyond ‘diseased’ youth sexualities will thus enable us to reflect on
the reality of young black people’s lives; one that considers how bodies
engage in sexual activities as socially constructed, which includes explor-
ing how race, gender and class inequalities intersect in the embodiment
of sexual practices.
Everyday heterosexualities of young people in South Africa 269
References
Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York:
Routledge.
Johnson, P. (2005). Love, Heterosexuality and Society. New York: Routledge.
Swartz, S. and Bhana, A. (2010). Teenage Tata: Voices of Young Fathers in South Africa.
Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Yusuf, H. B. (2007). ‘Sexuality and the Marriage Institution in Islam: An Appraisal’.
In E. Maticka-Tyndale, R. Tiemoko and P. Makiwa-Adebussoye (ed.). Human
Sexuality in Africa: Beyond Reproduction. Auckland Park: Fanele.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
How can literature and performance serve to queer, transform, and chal-
lenge dominant narratives of race and sexuality in the Hispanic Caribbean?
What are the different strategies that artists can use to destabilize hege-
monic conceptions that enshrine racism, homophobia, and transphobia
and posit them as natural, historical dimensions of modernity and of the
national in a context of U.S. colonialism? How can queer diasporic Puerto
Rican artists grapple with the legacy of family narratives that naturalize
social inequality? This essay is an extended reflection on these questions,
on my own efforts to think through the body about the present and future
of culture and identity.
The specific story I will tell has multiple starting points. On October 27,
2003, I received an email from the Puerto Rican playwright and perfor-
mance artist Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya; it was a call for submissions
for the First Experimental Muestra [Showing] of Casa Cruz de la Luna, an
alternative cultural center established in 1997 in San Germán, the second
272 Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
oldest city in Puerto Rico.1 I quickly wrote a text that eventually became
Abolición del pato (todo por la letra A) [Abolition of the Duck: Everything
for the Letter A].2 The event organizers accepted my submission and I pre-
sented my one-man show on January 24 and 25, 2004, along with Cuban-
American singer and poet Lourdes Simón.3 That year I also presented
Abolición del pato in diverse sites (Ann Arbor, Chicago, New York, San
Juan, and Tucson) in the United States (where I live) and in Puerto Rico
(where I am from), in versions ranging from fifteen to forty minutes.4 I
later adapted the performance text into a short story and published it in
Puerto Rico with Terranova Editores in 2013. More recently, I have begun
reperforming it, with some notable changes. The piece was originally con-
ceived in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but is in dialogue and comes out of an
engagement with contemporary Puerto Rican feminist and queer litera-
ture and performance. I highlight these intersections in the spirit of other
diasporic and migrant artists such as the Puerto Rican filmmaker Frances
Negrón-Muntaner, the Cuban-American performer Coco Fusco, and the
Mexican/Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña who self-
document and contextualize their own work with the understanding that
a self-reflexive arts practice serves an important goal, particularly when the
process is as revealing as the final work of art.5
1 On Adyanthaya, see Feliciano Arroyo (2011) and Fiet (2004a). On Casa Cruz de la
Luna see Adyanthaya (2012). Also see their website, <http://www.casacruzdelaluna.
com/>, accessed October 29, 2014.
2 The piece was initially called Soy un atraso de la teatralidad (todo por la letra A).
The text is archived in Casa Cruz de la Luna’s Teatroteca Virtual ‘Estela.’ See La
Fountain-Stokes (2004).
3 Lourdes Simón and I were also interviewed on the TV program Cultura Viva (TUTV
Channel 6). See Fiet (2004b) for a review of the festival.
4 In addition to San Germán, Abolición del pato was presented in 2004 at El Cascarón,
Old San Juan, PR; 13th Annual Fraker Conference, Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor;
RC Players Presents: CABARET JOYEUX DE VIE, Residential College, Univ. of
Michigan; ‘Queer Imaginaries’ Forum, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson; ‘Queer Latin(o/a)
America: Diasporas and Histories,’ Univ. of Chicago; and at the ‘Out Like That’
Festival, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance.
5 See Fusco (1995, 2001), Gómez-Peña (1996), and Negrón-Muntaner (1990–1, 1999).
Abolición del pato 273
Truth be told, I could say it all really began several years before, while
visiting the island. On April 2, 1999, I set off with the Puerto Rican author
Mayra Santos-Febres and our mutual friend Gerardo Calderón on an unex-
pected trip to see a production of Santos-Febres’s play Matropofagia at
Casa Cruz de la Luna, a space I had never visited.6 This highly regarded,
independently run cultural center is located in a late nineteenth-century
mixed-use commercial and residential building in the urban core of San
Germán on the corner of Calle Luna and Calle Cruz. It is a few blocks
away from several historically important Catholic churches, particularly
the early seventeenth-century Convent of Santo Domingo of Porta Coeli,
and next to a Masonic Lodge and an Evangelical church. The center houses
a ground-floor, unrestored, open performance space with flexible seating,
a small library, a gallery, and upstairs guest bedrooms for visiting artists.
It is also believed to be haunted by the ghost of a former resident who was
murdered in her sleep.
April 2nd was Good Friday and the protagonists of Matropofagia, the
actress Lydia (Puchi) Platón and the experimental vocalist Ivette Román,
were competing with the handsome, shirtless young men who participated
in the town’s Via Crucis, in which the youth recreated the scene of the cru-
cifixion of the Messiah. In spite of the strong carnal temptation, I opted
for the play, for the dark image of two women: a mother and a daughter,
one of them lying on a table while the other one walked around her, as if
it were a reenactment of Jesus’s Last Supper by female ghosts, survivors of
the final apocalypse of René Marqués’s classic, female-centered, national
drama of aristocratic colonial resistance and decadence Los soles truncos
[The Fan Lights] (1958) or of a play by Federico García Lorca; two women
in pain, including an angry daughter who wanted to eat her mother in an
act of matropophagy (as a maternal, family-centered enactment of anthro-
pophagy), reciting texts and interpreting songs, wandering through a space
nearly in ruins that welcomed us in an ancient city also semi-abandoned
by Puerto Rican progress and modernity: a modernity more committed
6 On Santos-Febres, see Celis and Rivera (2011); Pérez Ortiz (2008). On Matropofagia
see Otero Garabís (2000).
274 Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
7 On Marqués and the national see Gelpí 1993. On the Walmatization of Puerto Rico
see Álvarez Curbelo 2005.
8 On slavery in Puerto Rico, see Baralt (1985); Baralt et al. (1990); Coll y Toste (1969);
Díaz Soler (1981); Rodríguez-Silva (2012); Ruiz Belvis et al. (1978); Scarano (1984);
Sued Badillo and López Cantos (1986).
Abolición del pato 275
that has lead numerous artists to create related works of art;9 the profound
social and cultural transformations that have taken place in Puerto Rico
in the intervening years (including the dramatic rise of the women’s and
feminist movement and of an unevenly articulated LGBTQ movement that
has obtained limited gains, as well as the political ascendancy of Pentecostal
and Evangelical politicians with profoundly conservative viewpoints);
and my own life circumstances, as a recently arrived, untenured junior
professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, who had left his previ-
ous site of employment in 2003 due to a series of potentially homophobic
and anti-Latina/o events.
One of the questions posed by Abolición del pato is precisely whether
by being adopted one inherits the historical sins of the adoptive family, in
this case the legacy of slavery, perhaps as a type of postmemory (Hirsch
2012). As Marianne Hirsch shows, children of victims of trauma incorporate
the narratives and memories of their parents and grandparents to such an
extent that they believe to have experimented these memories themselves,
even if they occurred before they were born. In my case, this would be an
opposite relation to trauma: the horror of being the perpetrator of injus-
tice, the bearer of the shame and grief identified by Julia de Burgos in her
1938 landmark poem ‘Ay ay ay de la grifa negra,’ where the Puerto Rican
poet states: ‘que en los hombres, igual que en las naciones,/si el ser el siervo
es no tener derechos,/el ser el amo es no tener conciencia’ [for in men,
as in nations/if being the slave means having no rights/being the master
means having no conscience].10 The persistence of racism in Puerto Rico,
the enduring racial stratification that marks island and diasporic life, and
the generally lower socioeconomic status, political disenfranchisement,
and criminalization of persons of African descent in a neoliberal context
marked by increased policing and state violence suggest that the issue of
slavery and its impact is hardly over and that profound social changes are
still required.11
Another key question is what is the relationship between racism and
homophobia in a former slaveholding society and what is the responsibil-
ity of a contemporary queer subject in relation to this topic. This question
in particular forms the basis of the queer of color critique as developed in
the U.S. by researchers such as Cathy Cohen (1997), José Esteban Muñoz
(1999) and Roderick Ferguson (2004), who engage the work of American
feminists of color and of pioneering American queer of color intellectuals
such as James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Gloria Anzaldúa as a means to
rethink the categories of race and ethnicity within queer studies in dia-
logue with the critical framework of intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991);
it is also one of the key questions asked by Puerto Rican queer studies
(Aponte-Parés et al. 2007).12 The queer of color critique has been particu-
larly fruitful in relation to U.S. Latina/o studies, as evidenced in Michael
Hames-García’s and Ernesto Martínez’s valuable anthology Gay Latino
studies (2011), which highlights the profound debates within the field
of queer studies itself (or the more rarefied ‘Queer Theory’) in the U.S.,
quite particularly the entrenched resistance of some leading white scholars
to acknowledge the validity of race and ethnicity as central categories of
analysis.13 The queer of color critique is also a reflection of and reaction to
the entrenched homophobia within the fields of U.S. Latina/o and Latin
American (and, more broadly, ethnic) studies, where queer and LGBT
approaches are still not always well received.
Abolición del pato was born from the persistence of memory and the
uncertainty of what to do in the context of insistent reiterations of family
narratives by individuals who do not show remorse for a historical crime
of unsurpassed dimensions, in a broader context of unresolved issues of
11 See Dinzey-Flores (2013), Godreau (2002), Godreau and Vargas Ramos (2009),
Godreau et al. (2008), Santos-Febres (2005), Zenón Cruz (1975).
12 For a critique of the limitations of intersectionality, see Soto (2010).
13 See Hames-García (2011) and La Fountain-Stokes (2011a). Also see Johnson and
Henderson (2005) and Soto (2010). I wrote Abolición del pato and ‘Gay Shame,
Latina- and Latino-Style’ at the same time; they can be seen as dialogical pieces.
Abolición del pato 277
race, sexuality and social justice in the U.S., for example, debates in 2003
regarding the legality of affirmative action in higher education, as exem-
plified by two U.S. Supreme Court cases pertaining to the University of
Michigan (my site of employment): Gratz v. Bollinger (which the univer-
sity lost) and Grutter v. Bollinger, whose ruling allowed the continuation
of certain admissions policies that favored diversity. 2003 also marked the
decriminalization of sodomy in the U.S. as a result of Lawrence v. Texas and
the recurrent national debate regarding David Halperin’s undergraduate
English course How to Be Gay which flared up in the fall of that year in Ann
Arbor. In my case, this historical burden of queer and affirmative action
politics in a post-9/11 world was intertwined with the anxiety, frustration
and exhaustion of a more progressive anti-homophobic, anti-racist prac-
tice coupled with the possibility of using artistic creation as a potentially
transformative means of expression. My improvised and to a certain extent
unconscious solution was to recur to art as a disintoxicating measure, as
a ritual of purification, as the calling forth of the spirits of the dead and
a dialogue with those who are alive, a public declaration of that which is
kept silent; revenge and violation of the cardinal rule of not airing dirty
laundry in public. In a certain sense (and paraphrasing the gay Puerto Rican
author Manuel Ramos Otero),14 what I did in this performance and what
I have done in great part of my literary production (including my earlier
book of fiction Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails) was nothing more
than to stage a long list of public confessions through poetic and performa-
tive writing. I envision this practice as an aesthetic exercise with political
implications and, to a certain extent, potentially therapeutic ramifications
that benefit from the transformative use of ritual and play as described by
the anthropologist Victor Turner (1982); more than anything, it has been
a practice of honest (if indirect) self-confrontation that circumvents con-
ventional notions of appropriate behavior, gives way to free association, and
taps into the unconscious, perhaps akin to the inwards-looking processes
of reflection and artistic creation that Anzaldúa describes in Borderlands/
La frontera: the new Mestiza (1987), where she proposes the process of art
making as a shamanic state.
Artistically, I would argue that Abolition of the duck came out of the
crossing of a particular Puerto Rican literary tradition (principally a post-
1970s feminist and queer strand that includes Manuel Ramos Otero,
Rosario Ferré, Mayra Santos-Febres and Ángel Lozada) crossed with dra-
matic or performative arts, specifically with the tradition identified by the-
ater scholar Lowell Fiet as ‘el teatro puertorriqueño alternativo’ [alternative
Puerto Rican theater] (2004a), what scholar José ‘Keke’ Rosado called ‘el
‘otro’ otro teatro puertorriqueño’ [the ‘other’ other Puerto Rican theater]
(1997), as espoused in the 1990s by figures such as Teresa Hernández, Javier
Cardona, Freddie Mercado, Eduardo Alegría, and Aravind Adyanthaya.15
Of Ramos Otero’s, Santos-Febres’s and Lozada’s literary oeuvre I highlight
the conceptualization of the loca [queer, madwoman] and pato [faggot] as
key stigmatized metaphors for Puerto Rican male homosexuality, whether
it is the figure of the transvestite, such as in Ramos Otero’s short story ‘Loca
la de la locura’ [The Queen of Madness] (1992) or in Santos-Febres’s novel
Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000a), or that of the effeminate harassed
boy who literally becomes a duck in Lozada’s La patografía (1998), a novel
that climaxes with a banquet where they serve and consume this child’s
body transformed into a delicious canard à l’orange.16 In relation to the
staging of Abolición del pato, Adyanthaya played a key role: as a cultural
promoter, he created the context that permitted the development of this
piece; as an informal mentor, he made a series of observations and gave
suggestions that helped to expand it and make it more interesting (for
example, encouraging each doll to have her own voice and encouraging me
to memorize the text). (It is worthwhile to point out that Adyanthaya is a
15 Gelpí (1993) offers a nuanced discussion of this feminist and queer Puerto Rican
literary tradition. On alternative theater and performance, see Fiet (2004a), Martínez
Tabares (1997), Rivera (2014), and Rosado (1997).
16 On locas, see González (2014), La Fountain-Stokes (2011b, 2014), Peña (2013), Sívori
(2004), and Viteri (2014). On Santos-Febres’s novel Sirena Selena, see special dossier
in CENTRO Journal 15.2 (Fall 2003). On Lozada, see La Fountain-Stokes (2007)
and Pérez Ortiz (2008).
Abolición del pato 279
17 Lola von Miramar became well known through a YouTube video titled Cooking with
Drag Queens: How to Make Tostones; see <http://youtu.be/TA05Vl3FoV0>, accessed
October 29, 2014.
280 Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
and queerness in a Puerto Rican context speak to the uneven and unstable
privilege of whiteness, which can be dislocated by sexual transgression and
particularly by migration to the U.S., where linguistic markers such as accent
and cultural traits such as expressiveness can be sources of stigma, leading
to the unusual but not oxymoronic configuration identified by Salvador
Vidal-Ortiz as ‘being a white person of color’ (2004).
The rest of Abolición del pato includes the narration of a trip to San
Germán to see a play by Mayra Santos-Febres at Casa Cruz de la Luna; the
description of an encounter with a man from Hatillo on the day of that
municipality’s traditional Mask Festival, held on December 28th (which
lead to the ñusta’s pregnancy); a disquisition about the pronunciation of
the silent H and the phonetic exchange of J for H in Puerto Rican ver-
nacular Spanish; a dance accompanied by the act of spelling out loud the
phrase ‘Abolición del pato’; a game with the audience in which two spec-
tators form the letter A with their bodies (accompanied by Lola’s affirma-
tion that ‘El pato ES la abolición’ [The faggot IS abolition]); a discussion
about the nature of the folkloric character of the loca in the Feast of Saint
James the Apostle in Loíza, a three-day celebration held annually around
June 25th;20 an infantile regression in which Lola fights with her mother
about the use of sunscreen; the listing of names that begin with the letter
L, including a didactic trance about the element lawrencium; the retelling
of the three characters’ geographic and family backgrounds; the recita-
tion of the Spanish-language verbal game (or song) ‘Se Murió Lola’ [Lola
died] which serves as the source for the name of Doctor Lola Lolamento
Mentosán; the description of the difference between a cow and an elevator
(another language game); the performance of the Puerto Rican Christmas
aguinaldo ‘Padre San Antonio’ [Father Saint Anthony]; the recitation of
a religious-geographic prayer; and finally, an alphabetical recitation and
Lola’s retelling of her family’s slave-owning past, accompanied by an affir-
mation of paralysis, all of which leads to a heart-wrenching scream and to
a short declaration regarding the limitations of language to convey emo-
tions in a state of trauma and to respond to violence. In the printed version,
the performance concludes with a somewhat humorous quiz that reviews
21 See, for example, Miles’s scholarship on Native American owners of African slaves
(2005, 2010).
22 See La Fountain-Stokes (1994).
Abolición del pato 283
can offer us some clues, specifically his affirmation that ‘los indios, los
esclavos y los sodomitas somos calamidades públicas que deben ser dis-
ciplinadas’ [we Indians, slaves and sodomites are public calamities that
must be disciplined].23 Certainly, the genocide that Indians, slaves and
sodomites have suffered historically (in the case of homosexuals, be it
due to the Catholic inquisition, Nazi repression in concentration camps,
or contemporary politics of violence against LGBT subjects) shows that
there is a strong connection. In the context of Puerto Rico, where the
discourse of indigenous genocide has been completely naturalized and
where affirmations of self-identification as Taíno by individuals and com-
munities are vociferously rejected, to invoke Mesoamerican and Andean
cultures through the use of dolls serves as a way to recuperate a connection,
be it ancestral or at least hemispheric with the original inhabitants of our
continents.24 A more cynical or critical reading of the doll’s use, however,
might see their presence as an act of appropriation or of ‘playing Indian,’
as defined by Philip Deloria (1999).
The reception of Abolición del pato has been mixed, generating much
enthusiasm in San Germán (see Fiet 2004b) and less in San Juan. The 2013
publication of the book has generated a variety of responses, including
the observations made by José Quiroga in his presentation at the Librería
Mágica in Río Piedras in January 2014; a blog post by José Gabriel Figueroa
Carle (2014); a presentation by Adyanthaya, who led a series of theatrical
and performative exercises based on the book at the Del Otro La’o confer-
ence at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, in March of 2014; reviews
by Melanie Pérez Ortiz (2014), Luis Felipe Díaz (2014), and José Borges
(2014); and interviews and newspaper notes by Samantha Love (2013),
Carlos Maldonado (2014), and Ana Teresa Toro (2014). The limited recep-
tion of the 2004 performance text contrasts with the popularity of some of
the other short stories included in the book, which have more linear plots,
more explicit themes and clearer character development. The title of the
performance and the book have generated lots of interest in Puerto Rico,
particularly in relation to a stigmatized vernacular homosexual subjectivity
that competes with the modernity of gayness.25 This tension between local
categories and the imposition or predominance of terms and identities from
the Global North manifests itself in the anxieties about the disappearance of
the loca articulated by the Chilean Pedro Lemebel and the Mexican Carlos
Monsiváis, as Lina Meruane observes in her book Viral Voyages: Tracing
AIDS in Latin America (2014) and also appears in the sociological and
anthropological research of scholars such as Ernesto Meccia and Horacio
Sívori (in Argentina), Susana Peña (among Cuban Americans in Miami),
Carlos Decena (in the Dominican Republic and New York City), and
María-Amelia Viteri (among Ecuadorians, Salvadorans, and U.S. Latinas/
os). Succinctly, pato is still a term that generates anxiety and discomfort in
Puerto Rico; as such it retains an ambivalent semantic charge that holds
important possibilities for productive engagement.
Abolición del pato is a short performance in which I juxtapose a variety
of themes and in which I ask the audience to participate in an event that
possibly comes across as absurd or ridiculous, led by an enthusiastic and
well-meaning performer with limited theatrical skills. In a certain sense,
it is a failed performance in the sense espoused by Jack Halberstam in The
queer art of failure (2011), particularly if we measure technical proficiency,
artistic competence and overall impact; for Halberstam, the queer art of
failure consists precisely of finding unusual, strange, defective, and different
alternatives that do not correspond to the already-known models and that
as such run the risk of being misunderstood, discarded or forgotten. As a
text that anchors the later book of short stories, Abolición del pato serves
as a provocation, an invitation to reading and to travel to San Germán, to
understand the history of slavery and struggles against homophobia in
Puerto Rico and elsewhere. The piece offers the possibility for pleasure
and the recognition that the unconscious is a space of possibility and lib-
eration; perhaps one of its virtues is precisely its lack of sense, its shifting,
free and contradictory meaning, its uncertainty in relation to the history
of prejudice and discrimination, its failure to articulate clear or easy to
interpret positions.
In more recent restagings of the piece, I have performed in drag and
expanded the initial text to include lip syncing and reading of historical
documents and poetic works such as the poem by Julia de Burgos quoted
in the epigraph as a way to contextualize and diversify the perspectives
included. For example, at a show in November 2014 at Wesleyan University
in Connecticut, I read my translation into English of the ‘Regulations
of Governor Don Miguel de la Torre of 1826 Regarding the Education,
Treatment and Employment that Owners or Stewards Shall Give Their
Slaves on this Island of Puerto Rico’ (Coll y Toste 1969: 27–44) and incor-
porated diverse songs in English and Portuguese interpreted by the Brazilian
singer Marisa Monte. The use of makeup, wig, breast prosthetics, female
clothing, and high heel shoes also served to destabilize the historical narra-
tive, add humor, and heighten the perception of absurdity and disruption.
The fact that the performance was held in a chapel also allowed for riffs
off questions of religion, slavery, and liberal arts education in elite colleges
in the United States.
More than anything, I would like to propose that Abolición del pato is
not an autonomous work, with totalizing pretensions, that envisions itself
as a self-contained entity. Quite to the contrary: this modest performance,
the book of stories, and this very essay form part of a dialogue about the
legacy of slavery in Puerto Rico and the question of homosexuality.26 The
work of art is not the cause of the problems it reflects and is also not their
solution; it is part of a process of discourse and experience that accompanies
other pedagogical, political, and artistic efforts that can have broader impact
and wider results. Among these practices we can mention the continuous
27 Also see Davis (2003); Martin and Yaquinto (2007); Torpey (2006).
Abolición del pato 287
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Diego Falconí Trávez
Si, entre las narraciones mainstream, hubiese que elegir a un personaje que
representase lo queer mi voto sería para Hansel/Hedwig Schmidt, prota-
gonista del largometraje Hedwig y la pulgada furiosa (2001), adaptación
del musical rock (1998), dirigido y encarnado por John Cameron Mitchell.
Aunque con esta elección dejaría fuera a otrxs posibles finalistas (figuras
canónicamente queer como Brandon/Teena de Boys Don’t Cry [Kimberly
Peirce, 1999]; proto-queer como el/la Orlando de la novela homónima
[Virgina Woolf, 1928]; o cuasi queer por sus latitudes filmográficas no tra-
dicionales, como Alex de la película XXY [Lucía Puenzo, 2007]), me parece
que, con el paso de los años, este personaje ha demostrado una interesante
capacidad de ‘encarnar’ una narración ética que engloba a una época y a
ciertas corporalidades, que buscaban representaciones más complejas desde
lo sexo-diverso.1 Hansel/Hedwig una suerte de ‘epónimo de la generación
1 Uso intencionalmente el concepto diversidad sexual para dar cuenta de una época
donde la disidencia sexual ha sido, al menos en Occidente, bastante normalizada bajo
la narrativa capitalista que otorga una serie de derechos progresivamente a personas
que antes no los tenían.
296 Diego Falconí Trávez
decisiva’ (Ortega y Gasset 2006: 396)2 textual, en efecto, es una figura que
permite entender cuál ha sido el devenir de la teoría y las políticas queer
y su relación con ciertas corporalidades y geografías en los últimos años.
No niego que esta elección es un absurdo ejercicio. Jerarquizar, encasi-
llar y delimitar un ranking que sublima a un personaje usando una categoría
(analítica y política) como la queer, que proponía ‘repensar la política de
género’ (Butler 2004: 28), ‘protestar por (…) la idea de un comportamiento
normal’ (Warner 1993: xviii)3 y ‘resistir la categorización, de sí misma y
de sus sujetos’ (Leckey 2010: 1) parece un despropósito. Y no obstante,
justifico este experimento pues ‘la identidad narrativa del personaje solo
puede ser correlativa de la concordancia discordante de la propia historia’
(Ricoeur 1999: 221). Así, ubico a Hansel/Hedwig en un privilegiado (y
absolutamente subjetivo) lugar de preponderancia no para articular una
neo-mitología inserta en un canon homo/trans-normativo, sino para dar
cuenta de cómo en los últimos años las políticas y las teorías queer(s), han
creado un complejo relato, en concordancia y discordancia con las historias
de las disidencias sexuales, que puede ser analizado a la luz de un sugerente
personaje como este.
‘Hedwig es como esa pared / ante ti, en la frontera / entre el Este y
el Oeste / la esclavitud y la libertad / el hombre y la mujer, lo activo y lo
pasivo./ Y puedes intentar derribarla / pero antes que lo hagas / debes recor-
dar una cosa. / Mira, no hay gran diferencia / entre un puente y una pared’.
Hansel/Hedwig nacidx en el año de 1961, en Alemania, es, entre otras, una
metáfora del confín.4 Subjetividad de ‘en medio’ que propone una seductora
poética-política de lo queer. Su caracterización de persona alemana del Este
que busca migrar al Oeste, así como de hombre cuyo cuerpo intervenido
en una cirugía de reasignación de sexo queda en la indefinición biológica
y cultural del binario masculino/femenino, lx ubican como una suerte de
hito geopolítico de una época de cambios profundos, respecto no sólo a la
relaciones internacionales, sino a las relaciones corporales.
Hansel/Hedwig no es sólo una frontera impávida y vacía, sino un posi-
cionamiento desde el género que encuentra su sentido é(sté)tico a través
del arte. Hansel/Hedwig canta (a veces apasionadamente, en ocasiones de
modo más calmado) usando el rock como catalizador que funciona para
que el origen del amor –reviviendo a Aristófanes– recuerde la diversidad
de cuerpos y deseos implicados en el milenario e histórico acto erótico;
para que las relaciones pederastas revelen masculinidades dominantes y
formas cíclicas de socialización; para que el mundo gay sea visto como una
dulce y dolorosa venta de subjetividades mercantilizadas que afecta, por
ejemplo, a personas trans; para denunciar el violento discurso científico
que al normalizar vulnera cuerpos; para intentar dar cuenta de cómo el
cuerpo natural es inexistente5 Hansel/Hedwig es, así, un sujeto politizado
en la frontera que sobrevive gracias, justamente, a reivindicar un lugar de
orgullosa abyección frente a los discursos de pureza política y sexo-genérica.
Por ello es el personaje epónimo queer.
No obstante, en este posible desgarro ideológico que produce, en esa
belleza furiosa y humana que nos presenta su épica, es prudente recordar
ciertas trayectorias geo-políticas. Es decir, y volviendo a Ricoeur, dar cuenta
de cómo el relato de un cuerpo intradiegético muestra una historia conec-
tada –y aún así inconexa– de muchos cuerpos extradiegéticos que deben
leerse en su tránsito corporal, en medio de un mundo capitalista dividido
por fronteras dibujadas por la narración pos/neocolonial. Dicho en otras
4 Aunque miro con reparo esto, pues como menciona Cornejo Polar (1997) ciertas
categorías subjetivas son peligrosas metáforas.
5 Me refiero, y en el orden de conceptos presentado en este texto, a las canciones: The
Origin of Love, Sugar Daddy, Angry Inch, Wig in a Box.
298 Diego Falconí Trávez
hacia Occidente.9 Resulta curioso ver, pues, cómo ese ‘dejar algo’, puede
interpretarse como renunciar al cuerpo de hombre comunista para llegar
a la tierra prometida estadounidense de los años 90. Y a la identidad queer.
Esa migración de espacio y cuerpo es la que permite que el personaje actúe
y, en consecuencia, se desarrolle la historia.10 Estados Unidos es, pues,
melodía tácita y omnipresente que acompaña al drama de Hansel/Hedwig
Schmidt, que, irónicamente, erige el espacio de frontera y da un visado en
el que la subjetividad queer tiene una coherencia.
Esta omnipresencia se ve desde la primera escena de la película que
tiene de fondo a ‘America the Beautiful’ en versión rock, y en primer plano
a Hansel/Hedwig con unas alas desteñidas en las que se intuyen los colores
de la bandera estadounidense y en las que con amarillo se escribe paródica-
mente: ‘Yankee go home / ¡conmigo!’. Intertexto de un ángel caído, en una
composición dominada por el claroscuro discotequero y signo de la libertad
y la opresión que se enmarca en el epicentro estadounidense. ‘Hedwig es
como esa pared’, efectivamente, pues después de la caída del muro de Berlín,
y sin llegar a la ingenuidad del ‘final de la historia’, que predijo Fukuyama
(2006), sí que es posible afirmar que la globalización de identidades, desde
el capitalismo, nacionaliza y, de carambola, universaliza un prototipo de
identidades sexualmente disidentes. Pesadas alas para una persona que
pudiendo y ‘debiendo’ ser LGBTTIETC … para su consideración subjetiva,
desdeña de la categorización fija. Costosas alas que sirven para planear en
un cielo globalizado y líquido, cercado por el poder de una OTAN marica
9 Vale decir, sí, con la complicidad de la madre que de hecho se llamaba Hedwig Schmidt
y que es la que en una movida freudiana, le otorga su nombre de mujer, y por tanto
su identidad legal, para que pueda casarse. Es la madre además quien lleva a su hijo
al médico que le extirpará fallidamente el pene, dejando la pulgada furiosa de carne.
10 De hecho al migrar a Estados Unidos y establecerse allí las relaciones de Hansel/
Hedwig con otras personas inmigrantes sin papeles, que son parte de su banda, son
muy tensas (en algún momento lxs amenaza con avisar al Servicio de Inmigración
para que sean deportadxs) y revelan un lugar de enunciación queer que al no inter-
sectar género y estatus migratorio se vuelve excluyente. Sólo al final de la película esa
tensión se resuelve.
300 Diego Falconí Trávez
Parto de Hedwig and the Angry Inch, narración del Norte que colinda
con múltiples fronteras, y de su personaje de ficción Hedwig/Hansel para
realizar algunas preguntas pertinentes para la propuesta de este libro, que
intenta desviar las narrativas de la Modernidad. ¿Cómo se llevan esas alas
neocoloniales y, acaso, liberatorias desde América Latina bajo la problemá-
tica palabra queer? ¿Cuál es la lectura y posible revisión queer en el subcon-
tinente desde la literatura? Y, sobre todo, ¿cómo se rompe con la idea del
personaje epónimo global queer para pasar al personajes regionales contes-
tatarios cuir o cuy(r)? Para el análisis traigo a otros dos personajes (y espa-
cios) de las plumas del costarricense Alexander Obando y del ecuatoriano
11 Por ello que incluso dentro de Estados Unidos el término queer no sea aceptado dentro
de ciertas comunidades latinas inmigrantes (Viteri, 2008) y solo el queer critique of
color haya podido hacer el término más inclusivo.
Hansel/Hedwig, la Casa Playo, la Tunda 301
Para el análisis de este peculiar espacio parto, con mucho riesgo, desde
una perspectiva que asume lo queer como categoría universal, es decir como
concepto aplicable a identidades y críticas en distintos tiempos y espacios.
La casa en cuestión, vista así, podría ser denominada como un hogar queer.
Pensando que un ‘espacio queer se refiere a prácticas que se sitúan dentro
del posmodernismo en el que la gente queer se compromete; describe, asi-
mismo, nuevos entendimientos del espacio articulados para la producción
de contra-audiencias queer’ (Halberstam 2005: 6, la cursiva es mía). Tal
como menciona Halberstam el espacio queer es un lugar donde la gente y
los personajes queer accionan y crean referencias contraculturales para la
diversidad sexual en un tiempo compartido y fragmentado.
En otros cuentos contenidos en Teoría del Caos –así como en otros
textos de Obando– los personajes principales a menudo son un desfile
de maricas, eunucos, terceros sexos o ‘playos’.13 En ‘Madera de troles’, en
cambio, la casa de Alekis no tiene a personajes notoriamente sexo-diver-
sxs, aunque sí podría dar la bienvenida a ciertos públicos queer siguiendo
la propuesta de Halberstam. Justamente, este peculiar espacio invita, de
modo sutil y exigiendo imaginación a lxs lectorxs, a que se entre dentro
suyo para, además de experimentar su naturaleza viva que saliva o suda,
analizar ciertos eventos que pueden ser importantes para la disidencia
sexual. En una de las escenas más interesantes del cuento se narra como
‘Alexis escuchó el voluminoso crujido donde el techo estaba despedazando
su cama king size’ (188). Con la destrucción de aquel lugar emblema del
descanso (y a veces el placer) compartido (y solitario) se busca romper tam-
bién el ideal de hogar heterosexista burgués que propone la teoría queer.
Asimismo, el anhelado hogar de Alekis adquiere cierta descripción camp
que al jugar con ciertos estereotipos de las diversidades sexuales, añade un
toque tragicómico a su existencia: ‘parecía una casa de Barbie Leñadora’
(189), se nos cuenta, y en otro punto de la historia, desde una descripción
performativa que invita a pensar en el valor de la postura se señala que a ese
hogar ‘ya solo se puede entrar a gatas’ (190). En esta misma línea paródica,
ante la insistencia de la prensa que quería conocer a la casa que se encogía,
la que machaca a esa carne solitaria del personaje centroamericano del que
desconocemos gran parte de sus atributos. Símil que enseña que los cuerpos
no siempre pueden llevar a buen puerto los diálogos transnacionales sobre
la subjetividad y que obligan a desconocer esa mirada riesgosa e ingenua
que aplica el concepto queer de modo universal.
¿A quién da la bienvenida, entonces, esa casa queer transnacional si su
propietario puede entrar solamente bajo su propio riesgo? ¿Es ese espacio/
tiempo queer, casa marica poscortazariana, o mejor, esa Casa Playo, un lugar
que además de dar la bienvenida a las hordas lectoras tortilleromaricas de
todo el mundo permite el cuestionamiento de la geopolítica aburguesada
de ciertos sectores gays(/lésbicos) del Primer Mundo? ¿O es solamente
un lugar donde ocurren algunos acontecimientos fantásticos que pueden
ser aprehendidos como queer para ciertas miradas que tienen conciencia
de este concepto?
En la geopolítica latinoamericana, Costa Rica es un lugar ejemplar
para pensar las estrategias nacionales y las imposiciones internacionales
que han permitido al país lidiar con la violencia neocolonial del Norte,
manteniendo y cediendo soberanía para tener un territorio pacífico y rela-
tivamente estable. País clave para dar cuenta de cómo ciertas naciones de
América Latina se han posicionado en el contexto global para afrontar con
la colonialidad y poder dar la bienvenida a ‘propixs’ y ‘extrañxs’. Santiago
Castro-Gómez aborda un caso de la compleja realidad tica en el diálogo
internacional poscolonial, que se puede extrapolar de algún modo al resto
de América Latina, y comenta:
(…) las patentes son entonces el mecanismo jurídico a través del cual se legitiman
las nuevas formas de expropiación colonial del conocimiento en el Imperio (…) el
caso del contrato de bioprospección firmado entre un Instituto conservacionista de
Costa Rica y la multinacional farmacéutica Merck en 1991 (…) con ingresos de 4
mil millones de dólares al año y cerca de 3 mil accionistas en todo el mundo, pagó
la irrisoria suma de un millón de dólares a Costa Rica por el derecho exclusivo a
investigar, recolectar muestras y catalogar los recursos genéticos presentes en alguno
de sus parques nacionales. Esto se hizo sin consultar la opinión de las comunidades
indígenas que viven en esa región y sin garantizarles ningún tipo de beneficio (…) el
mercado de plantas medicinales descubiertas y patentadas por Merck gracias a las
pistas facilitadas por las comunidades indígenas y locales se calcula hoy día en unos
43 mil millones de dólares (84).
306 Diego Falconí Trávez
(…) la literatura LGTB o queer es toda aquella hecha específicamente para el consumo
de la gente queer, por lo que no incluiría ni a autores LGBT que no traten dichos
temas ni a autores en general que sólo escriban para el gran público, es decir, que hagan
categoría mestizaje (…) que falsifica de una manera más drástica la condición
de nuestra cultura y literatura. En efecto lo que hace es ofrecer imágenes
armónicas de lo que obviamente es desgajado y beligerante’ (Cornejo Polar,
1997: 341). Pensar en queer como sinónimo de playo se agrava cuando lo
queer se convierte en sinónimo de LGTBBI. Este mestizaje teórico patenta
y universaliza etiquetas sexo-diversas y prácticas neocoloniales para las
literaturas y los cuerpos.
En el caso de Obando, la Casa Playo es mucho más canalla, desa-
fiante y heterogénea que la etiqueta queer de su ensayo. La ficción supera
al análisis teórico. Quizá porque, desde una focalización crítica, la Casa
Playo no es solamente un espacio, sino un personaje complejo que, como
la Casa Usher de Edgar Allan Poe o la propia Casa Tomada de Cortázar,
agrupan metafóricamente lugares y épocas: y que, en este caso, sirve para
plantear como ciertos términos importados (como el queer) tienen mayor
potencial de oprimir al sujeto que deja de ser el agente ético y se convierte
en un personaje secundario.
Más aún, Alekis se deja morir en su bien inmueble, ubicado en suelo
costarricense y de materialidad finlandesa. De esta manera, el personaje
pierde su capacidad de agente que, en enroque, se le otorga a la casa. Pierde
el cuerpo poder de resistencia y el espacio/tiempo queer de Halberstam
(tonada yankee bienintencionada del Primer Mundo) gana terreno. La clave
de coexistencia entre cuerpo (personaje) y etiqueta queer (espacio-tiempo)
radica en la posibilidad fronteriza de que coexistan desidentificación per-
sonal y una politización subjetiva que garantice derechos. En América
Latina –y aquí la Casa Playo es ejemplar, por el sutil guiño apocalíptico
que teme la depredación del ecosistema– a esa coexistencia debe añadirse
hoy que el espacio-tiempo que se vuelve personaje no puede tener un gesto
depredador y ambicioso.
Así, la universalidad queer que busca establecer diálogos transnaciona-
les éticos termina sepultando la diversidad y la disconformidad, tal como
sucedió en la exploración realizada por Merck en Costa Rica. Allí radica
la tragedia de Alekis.
No propongo que la teoría queer sea una suerte de multinacional per-
versa. Finalmente, con el tiempo la motivación de rechazo de De Lauretis a
la teoría queer, ese matricidio, por ser una ‘criatura vacua de la producción
Hansel/Hedwig, la Casa Playo, la Tunda 309
El río nos dijo también que la Tunda tiene la sucia costumbre de tirarse ventosidades
en el rostro de los niños secuestrados para atontarlos y hacerles perder la memoria.
(…) Pero yo no desesperaba y me puse a investigar por mi cuenta a las plantas: a la
irritante gualanga, al negro corazón del guayacán, a la rampira que cobija, al milagroso
llantén, a la dócil malvaloca, al palo de la balsa, a los yarumos anillados, a las floridas
acacias y todos respondieron que sí habían sentido pasar a Numancia, acompañada
de la horrenda Tunda. (176)
Referencias
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Freccero, C. (2006). Queer/Early/Modern. Durham: Duke University Press.
Fukuyama, F. (2006). The End of History and the Last Man. New York: First Free Press.
García Márquez, G. (1999). ‘El argentino que se hizo querer de todos’, Notas de prensa:
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Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place. Transgender Bodies, Subcultural
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Horswell, M. (2005). Decolonizing the Sodomite. Queer Tropes on Sexuality in Colonial
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King, K. (2000). ‘Global Gay Formations and Local Homosexualities’. En H. Swartz
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New York: Routledge.
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316 Diego Falconí Trávez
This fifth QP volume has given space to a wide array of voices across
academic and national borders and has exemplarily highlighted, yet again,
QPs commitment to intersectionality as ‘the multidimensionality of mar-
ginalized subjects’ lived experiences’ in Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational
formulation (1989: 139). Continuing and extending the Latin-American,
320 Bee Scherer
postcolonialist focus of the QP4 book, the QP5 volume Queering Narratives
of Modernity queers (de/ post/ neo) colonialisms and their intersections
with the multiple glocal gender and sexualities experiences of sometimes
conflicting and idiosyncratic modernities. Further, by including contribu-
tions in Spanish, the book’s queering posits a conscious challenge to Global
Northern academic linguistic hegemony and normativity by troubling the
hegemonic usage of English as academic lingua franca.
As founder of the QP project, I am both humbled and proud to see
the seeds of a local act of scholarly defiance growing shoots and sprouting
so widely across geographies, disciplines and intersectional identitarian
facets and performances.
Queering Paradigms began as an act of academic activism and civil résis-
tance. In 2007–2008, my university – Canterbury Christ Church University,
an Anglican foundation – attracted national attention by banning same-sex
Civil Partnership ceremonies from being held at its main wedding premises,
St. Martin’s Priory at the Canterbury Campus. This move was driven by
the statuary communicant-Anglican majority of the Governing board, the
then Vice-Chancellor being a lay member of the chapter of Canterbury
Cathedral and the then Pro-Chancellor and chairman of Governing board
the Anglican Bishop of Dover. The move constituted a blatant and outra-
geous breach of the university’s own existing equality policies and created
much outcry among LGBTIQ identified staff and students. In time, the ban
was condemned by the University’s then Equal Opportunities Committee,
which ultimately forced its revocation. Ironically, this single act of religious
repression of LGB rights opened the door for me and other queer activists
to push for and achieve tremendous progress in reinventing the university
as an inclusive, LGBTIQ affirmative space.
During that time I was a vocal member of the Equal Opportunities
Committee as the delegate for the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. As a
queer identified academic and Buddhist, I decided to voice my dismay not
only in meetings, but to respond to institutional homophobia by organizing
a first interdepartmental Queer Studies research colloquium for LGBT his-
tory month 2008. In this way I tried to increase queer visibility by academic
means. The success of this initial colloquium ‘Que(e)r(y)ing Culture’ led
me to the idea for a large, international Queer Studies conference. With
Queer scholars, activists, critics and caretakers 321
the support of inclusively thinking Senior Managers and the dedicated new
Equality and Diversity manager, the first Queering Paradigms conference
took place an year later, in February 2009. Ever since QP has become an
annual conference, a book series and a network of scholars from multiple
disciplines committed to the queering impulse.
The QP conferences emerged as queering academic practices them-
selves; genial, unpretentious, inclusive and counter-neoliberal. One QPer
formulated this simply by means of one of the greatest compliments I ever
received ‘QP has restored my belief in academia’. That’s what it is about: a
challenge to the academic politics of vanities and the politics of jealousy.
If we take ‘queer’ serious, we have to queer our academic habitus as well.
From its inception, the crucial aspect of the QP network has been
the strong commitment to linking scholarly insights to specific and local
political struggles. Locally and nationally these QP beginnings contributed
to policy changes in Higher Education. I started co-chairing university
working groups and co-authoring of policy papers; Canterbury Christ
Church University now prides itself to have among the most progressive
LGBTIQ related policies and practices in UK higher education: from a
reputation of religious homophobia the university has transformed into
example to UK and US universities.
Moving from Canterbury, QP inspired Australian participants to bring
the new queering impulse and conference in 2010 to Brisbane. The QP
conference series was now developed consciously on different continents
so that participants could be exposed to and impact on new contexts and
cultural conditions. Importantly, we developed an ethos of leaving agency
for every conference firmly to local academics and activists, leading to a
sense of (g)local ownership without an imposed agenda.
QP2 featured a high-profile appearance of an influential public voice
on social justice, retired Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby.
Beyond Canterbury, the QP project started to effectuate changes in societal
awareness and contributed to policy debates. In his QP2 keynote address,
Justice Kirby noted the importance of policy changes to ensure full equality
of citizenship. He pointed out that despite abolishing laws from Australia’s
colonial past, it still had some way to go, stressing that ‘Legislation that does
not allow gay marriage is unacceptable’. These comments were reported in
322 Bee Scherer
the Australian national and local media, including the Brisbane Times and
ABC (Brisbane) and The Australian and The Age (national).
During QP2 North American participants challenged us to expand
post/decolonial intersections; consequently, QP3 in 2011 at State University
of New York, Oneonta College, had a distinct emphasis on including
activist voices from the Global South while continuing other important
strands, interrogating the impact of Queer Theory in studies of cultures
and societies, nationalism, ethnography, and intimacy.
A communal, successful funding campaign enabled QPers from
UNFR and UNIRIO (both Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) to secure holding
QP4 in Rio, July 2012 attracting 500 registered participants. The confer-
ence with its strong North-South focus and glocal postcolonial emphasis
attracted the most dominant North-American voices in Queer Theory
offering a quizzical challenge to QP inceptions as an unpretentious, coun-
ter-neoliberal grass-root movement. South American participants voiced
their disappointment about the privileged treatment and discursive space
granted to VIP queer scholars; the conference experienced and had to
negotiate the growing pains of coming-of-age as a movement of academic
defiance and activism within late-capitalist academia. Ultimately, the deci-
sion to play the neo-liberal game in order to subvert the very discourse of
hegemony and privilege was successful. The concentrated presence of the
North American Queer Studies elite impacted on governmental funding
of Queer social justice projects and cascaded down into renewed local
queer activist fervour.
At the same time of this precarious balance act, the QP books were
recognized as ‘… not only saying, but doing language, in order to give queers
around the globe voices of their own.’ (Strutt 2012). Examples for QP
inspired social justice activism and impact beyond the QP books include
already in 2011, the QP3 empowerment and fundraising of African activ-
ists. In South America, after attending QP4, Argentinean Anarcho-queer
activists successfully organized empowering QP workshops for the local
activists in Buenos Aires; my own contribution to QP4 inspired a young
Brazilian LGBT activists to fight against homo-and transphobia at uni-
versities in Rio de Janeiro in 2012:
Queer scholars, activists, critics and caretakers 323
[At QP4,] I met B and we had a conversation, from which I left with a different
worldview. A conversation of hope that I regard as a ‘politico-philosophical ‘salva-
tion, because I could finally see the horizon from my own life experience. […] In
that conversation I had with B I was able to see [..] a way through education and
activism! Three months after QPIV I [..] organized a major meeting at my university
to discuss the problems and potential of trans identities, the name of the event was
‘For the UFRJ for everyone: LGBT identities in HE.’ From there I went to [..] social
activism for many trans people! We formed a sort of collective that seeks to combat
homophobia, transphobia and lesbophobia in various spaces of UFRJ. I used the
knowledge acquired in the QP to organize various round tables and debates on the
subject of transsexuality [..]. I started to feel like a human being, a true citizen of oth-
erness whose displacement is very powerful! (Personal communication, 15 Oct 2013)
References
America. She has been a Member at the Institute for Advanced Study
(2014), a Lowenstein Fellow at Amherst College (2011), and a fellow at
the Woodrow Wilson Center (2005). She publishes in scholarly journals
and media venues and is co-editor of Sexualities in World Politics: How
LGBTQ claims shape International Relations (with Thiel Routledge, 2015).
Carlos Alberto Leal Reyes, estudiante de Doctorado en Estudios
Latinoamericanos en Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, tienes
una maestria en Estudios Latinoamericanos de la misma universidad y una
Licenciatura en Antropología. Sus principales ejes de trabajo son represen-
taciones sobre lo queer en América Latina. Sus publicaciones más recientes
incluyen ‘El pensamiento queer en educación: apuntes sobre las posibilida-
des hermenéuticas de la sexualidad’ y ‘Tribalismo. Una característica de la
religiosidad actual en América Latina en dos casos: el culto a María Lionza
en Venezuela y los Cristianos Evangélicos Gays y Lesbianas de Argentina’.
Elizabeth Sara Lewis is Professor of Linguistics, Portuguese Language,
Writing and Teaching at the Federal University of the State of Rio de
Janeiro (UNIRIO), Brazil. She is finishing a PhD in Language Studies at
the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio), supervised
by Dr Liliana Cabral Bastos and with a grant from the National Council of
Technological and Scientific Development (CNPq). Her research interests
include queer linguistics, identity and social inequality. She was one of the
organizers of the Queering Paradigms IV conference and one of the editors
of Queering Paradigms IV: South-North Dialogues on Queer Epistemologies,
Embodiments and Activisms.
Amy Lind is Mary Ellen Heintz Professor and Chair of the Dept. of
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati.
She teaches and conducts research in queer studies, postcolonial and devel-
opment studies, international political economy, LGBTIQ movements
and gender studies. She is the author of Gendered Paradoxes: Women’s
Movements, State Restructuring and Global Development in Ecuador (Penn
State Press, 2005) and editor of four volumes including Development, Sexual
Rights and Global Governance (Routledge, 2010). Her current research is
on queer politics and the ‘postneoliberal turn’ in Latin America, and on
queer (im)possibilities in Cuba (with Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal).
List of contributors 329
family/ia 15, 60, 61, 123, 124, 125, 139, 140, identidad 43, 48, 135, 141, 143, 144, 146,
233, 267, 281 150, 182, 197, 198, 200, 201, 203,
fascism 63, 64 210, 212, 299
feminista/mo 6, 174, 183, 184, 190, 192, identity 16, 59, 60, 93, 96, 97, 98, 101, 102,
194, 195 104, 120, 244, 245, 249, 251, 260,
fotografía 25, 169, 171 261, 262, 319
Foucault 62, 63, 64, 65, 79, 101, 146 ideology/ies 66, 71, 79, 243, 253, 255,
258, 259
gay 37–9, 52, 54, 55, 58, 60, 84, 97, 100, imperial/ist 51, 52, 58, 73
102, 106, 120, 179 India 62, 64, 66, 72, 227, 283
-pride 114, 117, 119 indigenous 113, 114, 116, 118–20, 123, 127,
gender 15, 56, 76, 80, 83, 85, 95, 96, 98, 128, 130
101–4, 120, 122, 244, 247, 248, institucional 179, 182, 192, 206, 219
262, 267, 268, 319 Inter-American Commission on Human
genealogy 85, 319 Rights 120
género 2, 6, 43, 135, 138, 145, 146, 151, international 58, 91, 92, 93, 106, 114,
157, 158, 170, 172, 173, 192, 197, 117, 128
198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 203, 205, intersectionality 276
209–15, 313 Islam 78
Germany 55, 62 Islamophobia 79, 105
global north 51, 53, 59, 61, 94, 323 Istmo 137, 138, 153
global south 51, 58, 61, 78, 104
governmentality/ies 63, 65, 66 jerarquía 12, 19, 141, 180
Guatemala 137, 284 jurídica/o 197, 198, 201, 203, 205, 206,
207, 208, 210
Hansel/Hedwig 295, 296, 297, 298, 299
hegemonic/y/a 63, 244, 253, 255, Latin America 69, 70, 73, 74, 78, 84,
257, 260 85, 117
Index 335
law 64, 65, 75, 83, 93, 106 pegging/er/ee 243, 245, 246, 247, 248,
lesbian/a 46, 54, 55, 58, 102, 115, 151, 165, 249, 250, 253, 260
179, 183, 184 performance/tivity 16, 44, 173, 244,
LGBT/IQ 47, 91, 92, 93, 98, 99, 103, 105, 246, 247, 248, 249, 250, 251, 258,
107, 108, 109, 128, 307 260, 261, 262, 263, 272, 284
linguistic 245 performativo/vidad 143, 144, 166
photography 3, 13
marica 48, 179 pink economy 52
marriage 52, 60, 61, 246, 247 pink-watching 62, 65
masculine 8, 56, 57, 119, 253, 259, 261 política/o 6, 39, 40, 48, 139, 150, 158, 177,
masculino/idad 37, 138, 139, 141, 162, 164, 179, 180, 181, 185, 187, 190, 192,
165, 208, 212, 220, 297 193, 225, 296, 297, 312
maternal/idad 217, 218, 219 politics/al 8, 9, 14, 51, 52, 55, 58, 59, 61,
matrimonio 9, 201, 207, 210, 211 62, 64, 65, 66, 69, 70, 76, 80, 81,
Mexico 15, 76, 120 82, 83, 92, 94, 97, 98, 99, 102, 103,
migrant 55, 58 104, 105, 116, 129, 131
modern/ity 14, 15, 92, 94, 95, 96, 98, 99, post/colonial/ism 6, 10, 14, 51, 54, 56, 57,
100, 103, 109, 114, 116, 129, 130, 59, 60, 66, 73, 76, 79, 80, 92, 305,
131, 217 313, 314
mujer 2, 23, 39, 139, 141, 146, 149, 159, 177, Puar 60, 62, 64
183, 184, 192, 202, 207, 212, 214, Puerto Rico 272, 274, 275, 283, 284,
216, 217, 218, 219, 220, 311 285, 287
Muslim 105
muxe/s 136–50 queer 4, 5, 7, 10, 13, 15, 19, 53, 55, 58, 59,
60, 61, 131, 175, 177, 178, 179, 183,
neocolonial 60 185, 187, 190, 191, 192, 245, 276,
neoliberal 248 295, 296, 301, 303, 306, 307, 308,
Netherlands 94 309, 310, 319, 320, 321
Nicaragua 12, 82, 83 politics 16, 51, 52, 56, 66, 95,
normality 254, 267 theory 14, 70, 79, 322
North Atlantic 79, 117 Queering Paradigms 319, 321
Romania 61 Tikuna 113–32
rule of nations 113, 121, 122, 126 trans-
feminism 186, 190, 193
same-sex 101, 115, 117, 125, 127 sexuality 83, 85
Second World War 71, 73 transfóbia/co 44, 303
sexual/i/ty/ies/dades 5, 37, 53, 54, 55, 59, transgender 1, 15, 18, 120, 319
62, 64, 65, 83, 85, 96, 100–16, 120, transgénero 158, 171, 172
131, 135, 145, 148, 179, 186, 207, transmaricabollo 176, 188, 189
241, 243, 244, 247, 259, 260, trastocar 12, 207
265, 268, 307 travesti 44, 46, 148
diversity 14, 92, 95, 99, 125, 129 en/tunda 310, 311, 312, 313, 314
identity 16, 97, 98, 99, 119
politics 14, 61, 66, 69, Uganda 54, 61, 66 128
SIDA 179, 181 United Kingdom 57
slavery 274, 285, 286 United Nations 93
social justice 17, 277, 321, 322, 323 United States (USA) 54, 272, 274, 285
society 65, 259 universal/ism 64, 308
South Africa 16, 60, 265–6 Uruguay 83
Spanish 4, 71, 274, 279, 281
state 7, 14, 56, 93 Venezuela 82
state-phobia 62–75
sudaca 158, 159, 176 West/ern 6, 7, 14, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58,
59, 60, 71, 79, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97,
teatro 189, 278 98, 103, 104, 105, 108, 129
theater 279
Third World 59, 61 Zapoteca 138, 139, 140
Q ue e r i n g Par ad i g m s
Series Editor
B. Scherer, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK
In line with the broad inter- and trans-disciplinary ethos of queer projects
generally, the series welcomes contributions from both established and aspiring
researchers in diverse fields of studies including political and social science,
philosophy, history, religious studies, literary criticism, media studies, education,
psychology, health studies, criminology, and legal studies. The series is committed
to advancing perspectives from outside of the ‘Global North’. Further, it will
publish research that explicitly links queer insights to specific and local political
struggles, which might serve to encourage the uptake of queer insights in similar
contexts. By cutting across disciplinary, geographic, and cultural boundaries in
this way, the series provides a unique contribution to queer theory.
Published volumes
Burkhard Scherer (ed.)
Queering Paradigms
2010. isbn 978-3-03911-970-7