A Bite of Visibility: on Queer/Latino Shame
Identity politics craves visibility, it encircles its subjects (usually the minority subjects of gender, ethnicity and sex) with the protective aura of pride. On the other hand, queer politics (if such a project is viable) would undermine the supposed consistency which subtends the fantasies of pride and turn them into shame. It is my contention that shame produces its own brand of visibility, a visibility beyond (or before) the standard circuit of pride, guilt and victimization which is so prevalent in the minority subjects of cultural studies. For the purpose of exploring the productive cruelties of shame and the seductive allure of pride, we will examine a particularly sensitive intersection: the gay-latino subject, as it is performed in texts by Gloria Anzaldúa and Manuel Ramos Otero.
Rubén Ríos Avila is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Puerto Rico. His research interests are contemporary Latin American and Puerto Rican literatures, Lacan, film and literature, contemporary poetry, and literary theory. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from Cornell University. He has worked as visiting professor and scholar at Brown University, Emory University, Harvard University, University of Notre Dame, and Yale University. His publications include Embocadura (loosely translated into English as “mouthpiece”) (Tal Cual Publications 2003), a collection of essays on popular culture; La raza cómica (The Comical Race, of the subject in Puerto Rico) (Callejón Publishers 2002), which approaches the subject of identity politics on the island; and numerous articles for both specialized journals and the popular press. He hosts a weekly show on film criticism, En cinta (On film) for TUTV, Puerto Rico’s PBS channel.
