Date Available

11-12-2012

Year of Publication

2012

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Document Type

Master's Thesis

College

Arts and Sciences

Department/School/Program

Hispanic Studies

First Advisor

Dr. Susan Larson

Second Advisor

Dr. Carmen Moreno-Nuño and Dr. Moisés Castillo

Abstract

This paper is part of the academic effort to recover historical memory in post-Civil War Spain and metaphorically applies the so-called Giobert Tincture to Carmen Martín Gaite’s El cuarto de atrás (1978), Dulce Chacón’s La voz dormida (2002) and Pedro Almodóvar’s La mala educación (2004) in order show how these works reveal the ghosts of the repression exerted against the epitome of the abject/obscene by Franco’s dictatorship: the queer collective. This collective continues to suffer from marginalization as well as from the effects of repression. I argue that El cuarto de atrás reveals C.’s repressed hybrid/queer identity and sexual orientation, that La voz dormida reveals Tomasa and Reme’s homoerotic/queer relationship and that La mala educación reveals in the form of cross-dressed/hybrid bodies how gender performativity is based on the repression of generic and sexual identity. First, I analyze the historical and artistic-cultural context of the selected works. Second, I outline the methodology and poststructural theoretical concepts that frame my thesis. Although the following chapters develop an episodic structure, a comprehensive reading of the paper provides a holistic perspective of the repression of queer people and its palimpsestic-spectral representation in the works of the above-mentioned authors.

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