Dentro/Fuera: El espacio homosexual masculino en la poesía española del siglo XX (review)

The virgule—or forward slash—plays a critical role in Enrique Álvarez's Dentro/Fuera: El espacio homosexual masculino en la poesía española del siglo XX, and not just in the book's title where it would seem to mediate the relative disclosure or visibility of, in this instance, a male subject's sexuality, his in-ness or out-ness of the closet. The virgule also marks the conceptual signposts of this study by mediating, along with "dentro/fuera," binaries such as "homo/heterosexual" and "poder/saber" (14) as well as "incorporación/transformación" (22) and "silencio/garganta" (37). The result is a consideration of the poetry—and drama and prose—of Federico García Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Jaime Gil de Biedma, and Luis Antonio de Villena that discloses the ways in which "la experiencia homosexual masculina en las variantes del espacio social español a lo largo del siglo XX determina en gran medida la consideración formal en el proceso creativo de estos poetas" (10). More particularly:

A través de la intersección de los argumentos de la teoría queer con la sociología posmoderna, veremos que, en los poetas objeto de mi estudio, la dinámica de incorporación/transformación de la experiencia social a través de la representación del espacio, determina la elaboración formal del poema. A través de este proceso, se construye un claro discurso de resistencia homosexual masculina al régimen de la heterosexualidad obligatoria. Asimismo podremos comprobar que, a través de la misma dinámica, la representación del espacio en el poema aparece, en efecto, como resultado de la experiencia social que lo produce y, a la vez, como el medio de su radical transformación.

(23)

But this is just the beginning of Álvarez's complex analysis. By means of a close reading from the perspective of reader-response theory, Álvarez also makes a case for writing and reading as acts of cultural criticism with specific ideological ends. Moreover, in a move not uncharacteristic of studies influenced by deconstruction, "la línea divisoria entre los adverbios de lugar dentro y fuera"—which is to say the virgule—"constituye una frontera ideológica inestable, muy porosa y, consecuentemente, caracterizada por múltiples cruces" (15).

Dentro/Fuera comprises an introduction and conclusion that frame four chapters divided into two parts corresponding to "dentro" and "fuera." The introduction presents the conceptual and theoretical principles of the study, an outline of the chapters to follow, and the narrative thread bringing the individual parts into a unified whole, that representation of male homosexual space in the poetry of the four authors to be discussed results in "la subversión de la (in)visibilidad homosexual española entre los años 1923 y 1993, fechas de la proclamación de la dictadura de Miguel Primo de Rivera y de la firma del Tratado de Maastricht respectivamente" (17). For Álvarez, this means that it is not enough merely to name the homosexuality of Lorca, Cernuda, Gil de Biedma, and Villena, something often ignored or, when acknowledged, pathologized. Instead, with his readings, Álvarez hopes to show how the representation of the homosexual experience of social spaces, and the poetic representation of the spaces themselves, call into question the hegemony of heterosexuality.

Each of the four chapters that follow the introduction deals in detail with one poet, establishing an intricate dialogue between poetic texts; cultural, social, and political history; and theory and literary criticism. In "Dentro," the first part of the book, Álvarez explores various forms of enclosure—the locus amoenus in particular and the natural world more generally—as manifestations of a repressive heterosexual order and their effects on the homosexual subject...