Queering the class struggle.



Palaversich, Diana. “The Wounded Body of Proletarian Homosexuality in Pedro Lemebel's Loco afán”. Latin American Perspectives, Vol. 29, No. 2, 99-118 (2002).

Pedro Lemebel's writings effectively challenge triumphant narratives about Chilean's economic model, pointing at the marginal subjects that inhabit the city. As well, it emphasizes the "transvestism" of Chilean identity, especially in terms of class and race. He also shatters any project of unitary or global "gay identity" by showing the multiplicity of particular lived experiences of "locas" and other queers marked not only by their sexuality but also by poverty, ethnicity, and AIDS. Moreover, Lemebel engages with three traditions and political projects —gay politics, the Left political agenda, and postmodernism— without being subsumed by any of them. Lemebel's resistance to the global anglo-centered gay identity project (which has also been adopted by Latin American homosexual groups) is based on a twofold critique: for one thing, this model is easily complicit with neoliberalism and consumer culture; while on the other hand, it elevates (gay) masculinity as the ideal aesthetic, putting effeminate gays in the margins. Class and gender then become entangled so that masculine gays are seen as respectable and clean, while "locas" are poor, marginal and dirty. He also addresses the left in their sexism and homophobia, claiming they have always seen homosexuality "as a sign of bourgeois decadence or the effeminized degradation of the male and is therefore incompatible with the revolution and its (ultra)masculine signifiers." (108)

Comments

  1. JonOctober 29, 2009 at 5:10 AM

    Coming to this immediately after reading your entry on Lockhart, of course I want to know about the similarities and differences. Lemebel is, after all, in many ways almost mainstream now. Is he therefore no longer subversive? Was he ever? Is he "hyperqueer"?

    Meanwhile, I'm interested in what you (or Palaversich) say about the "'transvestism' of Chilean identity." Say more. Are all Chileans, then, queer in some way? (Don't tell them if so! ;) )

    ReplyDelete

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