Homosexual Desire and Existential Alienation in Renato Pellegrini's _Asfalto_

Renato Pellegrini's second novel, Asfalto, was published in 1964 and created a firestorm of controversy. It is one of the few novels ever banned in Argentina for reasons of “obscenity” (rather than politics) and the censorship case for this novel went all the way to the Argentine Supreme Court. As a result of the devastating legal procedures, Pellegrini stopped writing and has been relegated to the periphery of the Argentine and Spanish-American literary canon, his work remaining relatively unknown and undervalued. In this presentation, I will demonstrate why this novel and its author demand greater critical attention from researchers on the literatures of Spanish America, particularly those interested in issues of gender and sexuality and the Latin American literary canon. Although Manuel Puig's El beso de la mujer araña (1976) is often popularly cited as the first Argentine novel to treat issues of homosexuality openly from a relatively positive and affirming perspective, Pellegrini's Asfalto, pre-dating Puig's novel by twelve years, is much more revolutionary in terms of content and attitude. The novel narrates a young man's process of discovery of same-sex attraction as he leaves the provinces and enters the homosexual “underworld” of Buenos Aires in the early 1960s. Unlike earlier works that present homoerotic desire in disastrous or shameful terms, Asfalto provides the reader with perhaps the first case in Hispanic literature in which the fictional world is made up of characters who are able to express their homosexuality freely and without guilt. Further, it is also interesting to note that Puig's now infamous use of informational footnotes in El beso de la mujer araña is foreshadowed by Pellegrini's inclusion in his novel of several explanations of the nature of homosexual desire with references to scientific theory and research into the field, as well as a listing of famous homosexuals throughout history. Pellegrini's Asfalto is a groundbreaking novel that reveals the youthful promise of a literary talent that was, sadly, silenced by prejudice and fear. In addition to its literary merit, this novel also serves as a vitally important cultural document for understanding the nature of homosexual subjectivity in a specific Hispanic context, providing historical insight into the relationship between center and periphery and the power structures that have maintained and still maintain marginalized social groups in positions of inferiority

Queer-Trans Solidarity in Soto’s _Juego de chicos_

Facundo R. Soto’s 2011 novel, _Juego de chicos_, continues the author’s exploration of the interpersonal relationships and socially constructed identities that he began in his first work of fiction, Olor a pasto recién cortado (2011). The newer novel focuses on the members of a gay soccer team in Buenos Aires and the phenomenon of the “boys’ game” which serves as a metaphor for the intricate play of gender and sexual identities which blend and commingle in contemporary Argentine society. Employing a critical apparatus based on queer theory, this presentation will examine the two main focal points of the novel’s title: the implications of a new kind of “game” being played in Argentina in the 21st century as it is connected to the transformation of what it means to be a “boy” in a city that has made significant progress in sexual citizenship and acceptance of diversity in the past few years. Unlike the traditional game of soccer in Argentina, which focuses more on the outcome –victory or defeat–, in Soto’s novel the playing of the game itself becomes the goal. That is, the quality of play, teamwork, and the bond of solidarity between the members of the team acquire greater value than winning. Pride, for this gay soccer team, comes not through defeating an opponent (the traditional masculinist standard) but rather through the creation of a community which prizes diversity, tolerance, and coexistence (the new, “queerer” Argentine virtue). Intimately connected to this change in what it means to play the game of soccer is the new definition of “boy.” The “boys” on the team form a variegated collection of gender and sexual variations which defy easy labeling. The team members, within themselves and in their relationships with others, reject categories, dichotomies, and binary oppositions, and work to combine together what society and culture have defined as absolutely distinct and insoluble. As a result, the team is a dizzying mixture of feminine/masculine, boys/men, women/men, friends/lovers, and brothers/sons/fathers which defies traditional laws, rules, and limits on gender and sexual identities, and which rejects the imposition of a hierarchy to maintain the privilege of one category over another. People who identify as queer and as trans form a cohesive unit that illustrates how solidarity and inclusiveness can be a source of strength and power

Gay Camp as Social Satire in Ernesto Schoo's _Función de gala_

Ernesto Schoo's _Función de gala_, published in 1976, uses gay camp in both style and form to produce a powerful indictment of the bourgeois social norms and ideals of mainstream society at the turn of the last century in Argentina. By combining the essential elements of camp —incongruous juxtapositions, off-stage theatricality, and incisive humor— with a melodramatic plot full of fantasy and excess, the author succeeds in conducting an assault against the two most staunchly defended linchpins of the bourgeois value system: first, the belief that wealth is a sign of social status which confers prestige on the possessor and, second, that norms for gender and sexuality have always been and must continue to be "natural," stable, and unchangeable

Borges' "Homosexual Panic": Christensen's Film Version of "La instrusa"

Presented at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention, Montréal, Canada, April 18-20, 1996In this paper, I compare Borges' story “La intrusa” with Christensen's 1981 film version to note the way in which a homoerotic element in Borges' fictional world has been perceived and translated from subtle suggestivity in the written text to a more explicit visual depiction. I will then analyze Borges' subsequent horrified reaction to the more direct rendering. In the story and the film, the Nilsen brothers make use of a communal woman for the purpose of connecting physically and emotionally with each other. Christensen's reading of Borges' text shows that the erotic desire of the two men is plainly not directed towards a female, but rather towards each other, with the female as the intermediary focal point at/in which the two men may coincide. The film seems to imply that Borges has substituted an intervening female body between the men as a way to permit the men to connect physically without transgressing hetero-patriarchal prohibitions. The question in this story of fraternal love that has crossed the homosocial-homosexual continuum to the homosexual side has been an issue since the story first appeared. For that reason, Borges' intensely negative reaction to Christensen's film is all the more fascinating for what it suggests about the Argentine writer. As Balderston, Altamiranda and Silvestri have noted, Borges was so disturbed by the depiction of the Nilsen brothers as homosexual, that he penned an article in which he broke with his long-standing opposition to government censorship of media by suddenly advocating it in the case of this particular film. As I will show, I believe that Christensen's adaptation hits the target when it visually portrays a subtext that simultaneously attracted and repulsed Borges and his reaction is a clear case of “homosexual panic.