Hispanisms and Homosexualities (review)

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 325 fot progress, capitalism and imperialism, today appears to denounce them, and to produce allegories of consumerism. Aftei a close reading of Thomas Hanis's novel (and die movie) The Siknce of the Lambs (1988), she equates psychoanalysis and imperialism since they similarly imply the colonization ofthe territory of die barbaric id. At the end of both practices diere is a cannibal, a projection ofthe appetite foi teiritoiies, bodies or meanings. Hannibal Lecter makes literal what is symbolically hidden : at the "heart of darkness" ofthe civilization— as in the core of any analysis, whether psychoanalytical , literary or cultural—there is a cannibal. Three particular objections could be made to the greater part ofthe articles. The fust concerns certain absences: Palencia-Roth and Lestiingant are merely mentioned, and the studies of Castro-Klaren and Philip Bouchei are missing in die bibliography. Secondly, no one except for Arens seems to have attempted to get into the not easy but crucial matter ofthe definition(s) of cannibalism . Finally, although the contia-discuisive tone in some ofthe articles is supported by an academically rigorous hermeneutic of suspicion—something foi which many ofthe Postcolonial studies congratulate themselves—when nairowly examined it shows the survival residue of a coknial humanistic episteme; as in the 16* century, metropolitan fhetoiical decolonization is often not just a recurring common place in the humanities, but also its moral theoretical exorcism. Above and beyond this, Cannibalism and the Cohnial World makes significant contributions to the critical analysis of key problems in current academic debates such as the political and epistemological authority of anthropology, the representation of otherness in classic colonialism and modern (neo)colonialism, different attitudes towards cultural influence and modernization, and the strong relations that the cannibal trope has with major postmodern topics like consumption, and the globalization process. Carlos Jáuregui The University of Pittsburgh Hispanisms and Homosexualities Duke University Press, 1998 Edited by Syhia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin's Hupanisms and Homosexualities inserts itself in the wake of previous influential schokrly anthologies on queei sexualities and Hispanic culture, such as ¿Entiendes?: Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings (Bergmann and Smith, eds. Duke UP, 1995); Bodies and Biases: Sexualities in Hispanic Cultures and Literatures (Fostei and Reis, eds. U of Minnesota P, 1996) and die recent Queer Iberia: Sexualities , Cultures, and Crossing from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Bkckmoie and Hutcheson, eds. Duke UP, 1999). This proliferation of worthy scholarship confirms the field of Hispanic queei studies as one ofthe most productive areas of recent intellectual inquiry and erudition. Hispanisms displays a remarkable internal coherence often tare in essay collections. Written from a variety of schokrly perspectives, by a diverse pool of international scholars (the collection enjoys well-established critics such as Emilie Beigmann, Brad Epps, Mary Gossy, Molloy, Paul Julian Smith, and young« critics, such as Irwin, B. Sifuentes Jáuregui, or Agnes I. Lugo-Ortiz), the essays dialogue, nevertheless, in productive and enlightening ways. An accomplishment no doubt due to the excellent wotk ofthe editors who have coalesced around their project a numbei of mosdy eloquent, eiudite, and convincing essays. Oiganized under four sections—"Gendei at Loss," "Nationalism and Desire," "Queers and/ in Performance," and "Desire and Representation "—the essays in Hispa^ms and Homosexualities succeed mostly in destabilizing the teim "Hispanism." As the editors daim, a certain monolithic constmction of Hispanism [...] was begging, one might say, to be queered. To visit sexual dissidence on it at this point is not an impettinent gestuie but a destabilizing move, a propitious fracture—in sum, an invitation to reread texts whose productive mobility has been deadened by sheer canonicity. (xi) 326 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Consequently, some essays denounce how "national genealogies and communal bonding have been often founded on die repression ofthe queer," while otheis trace how "the queer can in turn affiliate him- or herself with alternative genealogies and construct dissident, queei family romances" (xiii-xiv). Among rhe former, Lugo-Ortiz's re-reading ofthe lesbian body in die male canon of Puerto Rican literature and Rubén RÃ-os Avilas evocative yet eiudite analysis of Ramos Otero and Arenas as Caribbean writers...