Translating the Queer: Body Politics and Transnational Conversations

by Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba

Overview

What does it mean to queer a concept? If queerness is a notion that implies a destabilization of the normativity of the body, then all cultural systems contain zones of discomfort relevant to queer studies. What then might we make of such zones when the use of the term queer itself has transcended the fields of sex and gender, becoming a metaphor for addressing such cultural phenomena as hybridization, resignification, and subversion? Further still, what should we make of it when so many people are reluctant to use the term queer, because they view it as theoretical colonialism, or a concept that loses its specificity when applied to a culture that signifies and uses the body differently?

Translating the Queer focuses on the dissemination of queer knowledge, concepts, and representations throughout Latin America, a migration that has been accompanied by concomitant processes of translation, adaptation, and epistemological resistance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783602926
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas, Austin, where he teaches queer and gender issues in Latin American literature, film, and culture.
Héctor Domínguez Ruvalcaba is a professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas, Austin, where he teaches queer and gender issues in Latin American literature, film, and culture.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Troubles and travels of the queer 1

Latin American queer studies have been undertaken in a transnational dialogue, which implies a politics of cultural translation 3

Colonialism/decolonization is a tension implicit in the articulation of queer dissidences 8

Queerness has been associated with modernity in most twentieth-century debates on gender and sexuality 11

Queer is a methodology of critical thinking that by deconstructing the gender system questions the foundations of the nation and the state 14

The machineries of consumption and disposability of neoliberalism complicate the processes of body liberation and queer expressions 17

1 Queer decolonization 19

Coloniaiity and queerness: A discursive invasion 20

Queer colonial and translation 23

Reading the visceral 30

Centrality of the liminal 39

Conclusion 52

2 Queerness and the nation in peripheral modernity 55

The modern politics of the body 58

The aesthetic weapon of queerness 66

Knowing the queer 77

To cover and to uncover: From closet to scandal 82

Queer resistance 87

Conclusion 90

3 LGBT politics and culture 93

The libertarian age 95

Gay culture in Latin America 104

Coming out: Recurring asymmetries 110

Homophobia: The capital cause 118

The AIDS pandemic 123

Normalizing the queer 128

4 Beyond LGBT struggles: Trans politics and neoliberal sex 133

Trans talk 134

Queerness and the neoliberal order 154

Conclusion 165

Conclusion 167

References 171

Index 185

Editorial Reviews

"A profound work that will illuminate both how, through the figure of the queer, Latin Americanists should consider central concepts such as the nation, citizenship, and identity; and how queer theorists outside Latin America might envision a more thorough understanding of histories of the queer."--Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, author of The Avowal of Difference: Queer Latino American Narratives

"Ruvalcaba offers a concrete vision of queer resistance, one that it is not just a movement for gender liberation but also a transnational quest to decolonize the present. A must read for anyone grappling with queer politics in the Americas."--Holly Lewis, author of The Politics of Everybody

"Ruvalcaba's significant contribution to queer studies is a survey of the field's more contemporary scholarship produced in Latin America and abroad. . . . Very useful for scholars looking to expand the exchanges between translation and queer theories."--Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui, author of The Avowal of Difference: Queer Latino American Narratives "Translation Studies"

From the Publisher

“Ruvalcaba’s significant contribution to queer studies is a survey of the field’s more contemporary scholarship produced in Latin America and abroad. . . . Very useful for scholars looking to expand the exchanges between translation and queer theories.

Translation Studies