Intervenciones en las ciudades del deseo: voces sexuadas de la nación en la narrativa contemporánea del Caribe hispano

This dissertation explores some of the strategies used to represent multiple intersections of gender, sexuality and urban space in contemporary narratives from the Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico) produced after 2000. An analysis of several contemporary novels illustrates how connections to sexuality and urban space are established a short time after significant political changes on each island, thereby privileging the queer subjects as main spokespersons of the nation in the beginning of the third millennium. The theoretical framework of my dissertation combines Cultural and Urban Studies, Gender and Queer Theory. On the one hand, this study includes the concept of the lettered city proposed by Ángel Rama as a traditional perception of urban space in Latin America; Michel Foucault’s analysis of space and its relation to power; and the interaction of strategies and tactics proposed by Michel de Certeau. On the other hand, this study implements José Quiroga´s view of sexuality as intervention; Yolanda Martínez San-Miguel’s neologism of ambisexual which refers to identities that oscillate between various sexual identifications without assuming any as definitive; and Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé’s queer subject as an abject excluded from national discourse. The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on the transformation of a queer subject from an abject to a central character, one who outlines a new national project for Cuba in Contrabando de sombras (2002) by Antonio José Ponte. Chapter two shows how constant relocations within urban space exemplify a crisis of hegemonic masculinity under Trujillo’s totalitarian regime in La estrategia de Chochueca (2000) by Rita Indiana Hernández and El hombre triángulo (2005) by Rey Emmanuel Andújar. Chapter three illustrates how the Puerto Rican queer experience on the island and its diaspora marks the concept of sexuality as something movable and unfixed in No quiero quedarme sola y vacía (2006) by Ángel Lozada and Conversaciones con Aurelia (2007) by Daniel Torres. My fourth and last chapter reevaluates all these texts from the perspective of sex tourism to show how queer sexuality and the nation are redefined in the context of tourism and globalization.Ph. D.Includes bibliographical referencesIncludes vitaby Elena Valde