Cuerpo politico del deseo: literatura, genero e imaginario geocultural en Cuba y Puerto Rico (1863-2000)

Our study starts with an analysis of two nineteenth century "foundational novels" from Puerto Rico (La Peregrinación de Bayoán, 1863) and Cuba (Amistad Funesta, 1885), and continues with an analysis of the literary work produced by twentieth Century Cuban and Puerto Rican female authors (Luisa Capetillo, Mariblanca Sabas Alomá, Nancy Morejón, Ana Lydia Vega, Achy Obejas, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, and Mayra Santos-Febres). Through a comparative approach focused on the diverse representations of gender, sexuality, Caribbeanness, and nation, we have studied the similarities and differences among these female writers' literary projects, as well as the continuities/discontinuities of their own projects in regards to the geo-cultural and biopolitical imaginaries developed by their literary predecessors, Eugenio María de Hostos and José Martí, respectively. This comparative and critical analysis addresses three specific questions and concerns:•to study how the geo-cultural and political imaginaries represented in these two novels have been designed under the image of a single and unified fraternal and virile political body which excludes women from the social, and/or those bodies or sexualities which threaten to fragment the ideal construction of a unified and homogeneous civil society, and which obstruct the literary representation of the ideal virile subject, leader of the national emancipatory cause.•to examine how the above-mentioned female writers have challenged such politico-patriarchal configurations, which have in turn, established the hegemonic cultural landscape for each country and for the Caribbean region in relation to the discourses of sexual preference and economy (the heterosexual family), race (racial mixing/"mestizaje" or whitening/"blanqueamiento"), and geography (insularism, Caribbeanness/ "Antillanismo", or Americanness/ "Nuestroamericanismo").•to analyze how the challenge to these modernizing norms (heterosexist, phallocentric and pro-transculturation) opens the way towards new alliances amongst the peoples of the Caribbean islands and their Diasporas, based on a spirit of solidarity and an affective search for the Other. These critical projects allow us to imagine the Caribbean as a culturally flexible region, and as a more equal, just, and open society, founded upon a new "minoritarian ethics" capable of resisting and deconstructing the effects of coloniality of power, already present in anticolonial XIXth century literature