Cross-Cultural Queer Encounters: Women, Nation and Queer Culture in Contemporary Spanish Narrative and Film
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Cross-Cultural Queer Encounters: Women, Nation and Queer Culture in Contemporary Spanish Narrative and Film By Megan Sheldon Copyright 2015 Submitted to the graduate degree program in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Dr. Jorge Pérez, chairperson ________________________________ Dr. Yajaira Padilla ________________________________ Dr. Margot Versteeg ________________________________ Dr. Verónica Garibotto ________________________________ Dr. Marta Vicente Date Defended: April 30, 2015 ii The Dissertation Committee for Megan Sheldon certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Cross-Cultural Queer Encounters: Women, Nation and Queer Culture in Contemporary Spanish Narrative and Film ________________________________ Dr. Jorge Pérez, chairperson Date approved: April 30, 2015 iii Abstract This dissertation focuses on queer representations of female immigration and travel to and from Spain in contemporary Spanish literature and film from the late 1990s to the present. Through an intersectional analysis that considers race, class, gender and sexuality, I build on the work of scholars who explore the representation of lesbian identity and experiences in contemporary Spanish cultural production. It is my goal to demonstrate the various ways migration and sexuality transverse in more recent works and are intrinsically connected to constructions of Spanish national identity. To this end, I analyze the work of a diverse group of writers and directors, ranging from self-identified lesbian authors such as Mabel Galán, Libertad Morán and Illy Nes to critically acclaimed male directors such as Julio Medem and Fernando León de Aranoa. I examine how these works closely engage with the officially celebrated modernization process in Spain from the early 1990s onward as well as the country’s integration into Europe. As a whole, I argue that these cultural productions reveal the socio- economic and racial hierarchies still at play in Spain’s celebrated “rainbow society.” Additionally, I propose that these works provide a means for questioning globalizing discourses of sexuality and expressions of LGBT liberation across lines of race and ethnicity. Through my analysis, I aim to situate these works within the broader socio-political changes and developments in contemporary Spain as well as question the assumption that cultural, national and sexual identity are fixed entities. iv Acknowledgements I am extremely grateful to the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas for building an academic and creative environment through which I have been able to nourish my love for art in its many forms. I would first like to thank the director of my dissertation, Jorge Pérez, for fostering my interest in Spanish literature and film and for his constant support, guidance and intellectual generosity while working on this project as well as throughout my years at KU. His expert knowledge of Spanish literature, film, gender studies and queer culture has been a tremendous resource, and I am deeply grateful for all the professional and personal advice he has given me. I thank Yajaira Padilla for so generously sharing with me her acute insights into theory, feminism and cultural studies while taking her graduate class and in many extensive discussions outside the classroom while working on this project that have helped me to refine my analysis. I would like to thank Margot Versteeg for offering thoughtful questions that helped me to develop my arguments and for her support throughout this process. Marta Vicente and Veronica Garibotto have been very helpful readers, and I greatly appreciate their careful reading of my work. My sincerest thanks goes to Lucas Platero for sharing with me his knowledge of the LGBTQ movement in Spain as well as for opening my eyes to new perspectives through many conversations about books, theory and popular culture. At KU I have found many colleagues and friends who have offered me an invaluable network of professional and personal support. Thank you to Karen Acosta, Edma Delgado, David Lisenby, Jake Longaker, Tiffany Creegan Miller, María García Otero and Jake Rapp. Chelsea Ashcraft and Luis Rodríguez Cortés deserve special mention, I am forever grateful to each of them for their enduring friendship and for often times reminding me to laugh and enjoy the world outside of academia. I would also like to thank my colleagues at Colby College who have made the final year working on my dissertation by far the most memorable and enjoyable. v Brett White, Manuel Portillo, Emma García, Lola Bollo-Panadero and Clara Morales were a constant source of support and good times. I would especially like to thank Anita Savo who has been an endless source of heartfelt encouragement and made sure that I both worked and played “hard” in Waterville. I would also like to extend a special thank you to Jorge Olivares for being a model of professionalism and inspirational scholarship. Outside of academia, I am most grateful to my family. To my late grandmother, Silvana, for teaching me Spanish and for instilling in me a love for books. To my aunt, Patricia, for her warmth despite the distance. And, most of all, to my parents, Kathy and Frank Sheldon, for their unconditional love and encouragement which have meant the world to me. I feel so grateful to have parents who taught me the value of hard work and told me from an early age that an education is one of the hardest won and most valuable assets a person can possess. Finally, I would especially like to thank my mother for always reminding me to stay motivated and for using her incredible strength to help me find my own. vi Table of Contents Introduction: Framing Gender and Migration in Contemporary Spanish Queer Cultural Production (1) Chapter One: Girl Seeks Girl: Mainstream Culture and the Effects of Visibility in Spanish Lesbian Chick Cultural Production (22) Chapter Two: On Fantasy, Exoticism and Otherness in Contemporary Spanish Lesbian Travel Narratives (54) Chapter Three: Queer Narratives of Eroticism and Kinship in Princesas and Agua con sal (84) Chapter Four: Loving Strangers: Representations of Gay Globality in Spanish Cultural Production (114) Conclusion: Taking Action: Intersections of Cultural Production, Queer Theory and Praxis in Spain (143) End Notes (149) Works Cited (158) 1 Introduction Framing Gender and Migration in Contemporary Spanish Queer Cultural Production In 1991, Teresa de Lauretis coined the term “queer” as a social process that resists political systems in order to represent identities camouflaged by earlier labels, such as “homosexual,” which carries pathological undertones, and “gay” which was predominately associated with a white, middle-class male community (iii-iv). In 1993, Annamarie Jagose published an introduction to “queer theory,” outlining the development of queer studies in relation to the parallel appearance of lesbian and gay studies in universities in the 1990s. Describing “queer” as a term that focuses on “mismatches of sex, gender and desire,” Jagose accents what she terms the “elastic” and “mobile” character of queer studies that enable it as a critical approach to call attention to instabilities in seemingly unproblematic notions of gender and sexuality (1-3). More recently, the term has fallen under scrutiny as a result of its engagement with mainstream culture and politics as both threaten to appropriate it. David Eng effectively explains this shift in the meaning of “queer,” arguing that its close association with lesbian and gay identity politics have consequently transformed the term from a position of critique and resistance into part of a struggle for inclusion into accepted social models— for example access to marriage (xi). As a response, Eng along with contemporary queer scholars such as José Esteban Muñoz and Judith Halberstam, among others, have looked to broaden the term’s scope, particularly exploring the intersections of queer theories with theories of race, migration and globalization. Drawing from this query, the objective of this dissertation is to explore how queer theory may lend itself not only to understanding the implications of recent publications from within Spain’s LGBT presses but also alternative readings of contemporary cultural productions in Spain, all of which pose questions concerning traditional notions of gender, ethnicity and nationality. 2 The role of queer theoretical and political postures in Spain is of particular importance granted the county’s position as what Spanish scholar Raquel Osborne terms “un laboratorio de cambio social en temas LGTB” in recent years (86). The movement for and passing of Law 13/2005 in 2005 that modifies the Spanish Civil Code to permit same-sex marriage along with Law 3/2007 in 2007 that allows individuals to legally change their name and sex without surgically altering their appearance has made the county a focal point for social change in issues related to the LGBT community. In particular, Law 13/2005 not only expands the concept of marriage but also has consequences when considering adoption rights, residency and inheritance among other factors (“Los efectos” 677). Furthermore, as a result of these legal advances, the LGBT community in Spain has experienced an increased level of visibility within the socio- political arena that has also extended to cultural productions