Discomforts in the Lettered City

Abstract

This article reviews polemics engaged in by the writers Reinaldo Arenas, Fernando Vallejo, Porfirio Barba Jacob, and Salvador Novo, specifically the ways that these gay artists, who today exert notable influence on the national literatures, confront the most powerful intellectuals of the lettered city -Ángel Rama, José Vasconcelos, and Pedro Henríquez Ureña- to demand a place in a cultural field controlled by sexual hegemony. I propose that these polemics, beyond simply highlighting isolated problems, as critics and even the protagonists themselves have read them, try to re-map and call attention to the influence and novelty of these artists at the margin of power at the same time that they seize power for them. These vulgar and bitter polemics do not only queer intellectualism, but they also testify to the plasticity of a novel body that requires a name to materialize itself once and for all.