Historical Constructions, Sexual Memories Público

Abstract

Abstract: Historical Constructions, Sexual Memories, by Matthew Edwards

Historical Constructions, Sexual Memories examines how Latin American marginal
and minority subjects defy chronological and temporal order in their artistic works in order
to create alternative ways of engaging the past, which creates new ways of looking at
culture and society.

In the first chapter, "Hearing Silent Voices: Manuel Puig, Prison Narratives, and El
beso de la mujer araña", Manuel Puig's decision to express queer sex within nontraditional
narrative terms represents the apex of a marginal historical narration that is imprisoned by a
political struggle in Argentina's history founded on heterosexuality. In "Discovering Silent
Pasts: Copi's Archive of the Marginal Subject", Copi's cartoon, dramatic and novelistic
production is regarded as an archive of marginal discourses. A look into Copi's most
famous comic strip, La femme assise, his play titled Loretta Strong (1974), and his first
novel, El baile de las locas (1976) locates marginality in an historical narrative that focuses
on the difficulty of locating the queer body in a clear and concise narrative of the past. For
Copi, the only historical narrative able to define the queer subject situates meaning itself in
the erotic encounter between naked bodies. Finally, the third chapter focuses on El affair
Skeffington (1992), by María Moreno. In it, a textual collage of misrepresented,
misunderstood and sometimes completely unknown historical documents engages a
previously disregarded past that tells of a female erotic network in conjunction with
disorderly social conduct.

In these texts, each author sees traditional historical narration as limiting the way
marginal subjects define themselves within chronological time. Taken together, they
present a memory founded on sex as a means of embracing chaos, confusion and
contradiction in their historical endeavor. When sexual intimacy becomes a way of
narrating the past, sexual memory leads to a present where nothing is over-looked, not even
awkward pleasures or queer passions.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
Introduction: Hindsight, Blindness and Looking into Latin America's Marginal Pasts
……….1
I. From Marginality to Queer Stories to Sexual Memories
……….8
II. Queer Histories, Sexual Memories: Speaking about Argentina's Marginal Past
……...15
III. The State of My Question: (Sexual) Memories of Puig, Copi and Moreno
……...30
Chapter 1: Hearing Silent Voices: Manuel Puig, Prison Narratives, and El beso de la mujer
araña
………35
I. Puig's Prison Narrative, Part One: Paraphrasing Pasts, Narrating Difference
………40
II. Puig's Prison Narrative, Part Two: Dominance, Documents and Textual
Confinement
………64
III. Kissing the Spider Woman: Puig's Silent Discussion of the Unimaginable
………80
Chapter 2: Discovering Silent Pasts: Copi's Archive of the Marginal Subject
………90
I. Copi's La femme assise: A Weekly Archive of the Margins
………98
II. Imag(in)ing Narratives: Copi and an Impossible Historical Theatrics
……..109
III. Sexual Memory: Writing a Timeless Archive with Copi's El baile de las locas
……..124
Chapter 3: Insinuating Pasts: Poetic Subjects and their Sexual Memories in María
Moreno's El Affair Skeffington
……..155
I. Archival Confusions and Historical Fictions in Moreno's Prologue
……..162
II. Reciting the Past: Quotes, Interpretation and Historical Narration
……..176
III. A Sexual Poetics of the Subject: Reading Skeffington's Affairs
……..207
Conclusion: Blurred Vision, Sexual Stories and the Historical Subject
……..215

About this Dissertation

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Spanish
Degree	PhD
Submission	Dissertation
Language	English
Research Field	Gender Studies Literature, Latin American
Palavra-chave	Manuel Puig Marginality Subjectivity Copi Sexuality Twentieth Century Argentina Maria Moreno Latin American Literature Narrative History
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Quiroga, Jose, Emory University
Committee Members	Carrion, Maria Mercedes, Emory University Bammer, Angelika, Emory University Feldman, Hernan, Emory University

Última modificação

Primary PDF

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions
	Historical Constructions, Sexual Memories ()	2018-08-28 15:01:20 -0400	Press to Select an action Download

Supplemental Files

Thumbnail	Title	Date Uploaded	Actions