Abstract

Using the psychoanalytical concept of the paternal function, this article will explore the ways in which two similar plays, Lo que son mujeres by Francisco Rojas Zorilla and El desdén con el desdén by Agustín Moreto diverge in their endings, hinging on the function, or lack thereof, of the father figure.

Abstract

Recent Catalan criticism has focused on place and space, as well as immigration, but has overlooked temporality. Yet migrations are not only a matter of space (of demographic movements and geographical relocations), but also of time: immigration questions the idea of origins and the possibility of a shared future, and problematizes the rhythms of everyday life. Temporality, in fact, is a key axis in the formation of identities and in cultural conflicts, not just regarding the uses of the past and the projection of societies towards the future, but also in relation to the normative uses of the body. The coexistence of asynchronous temporalities provoked by immigration is a factor in both cultural and psychic conflict. Najat El Hachmi’s novel L’últim patriarca (2008) is an excellent example of these phenomena. Here the circular temporality, based on the repetition of cycles, of Morocco’s traditional society comes to a halt in the failure of the narrator’s father to reproduce patriarchal domination in Catalonia. The novel roots this experience in modern referents through a dialogue with the Catalan literary tradition, and questions the idea of temporality understood as succession of generations by problematizing biological reproduction and gender subordination and through the shattering effects of anal sexuality. This article offers an integrated analysis of these issues by reference to psychoanalysis.

Abstract

L’aprenentatge de la soledat (Learning to Be Alone), by the Catalan author David Vilaseca (2008), raises issues about writing, identity and sexuality. Drawing on cultural theory, psychoanalysis and queer theory, the narrator and protagonist, David —the author’s alter ego— writes a journal to shape his gay identity. Rather than proclaiming homosexuality, autobiography retrospectively shapes the self’s sexual identity. Vilaseca renders the story as fiction, not as an authentic personal diary, whereupon the novel is an example of self-fiction, but also a mixture of theory and personal experience. Specifically, psychoanalysis shapes the character as a depressed, paranoiac, masochist, reliant subject who feels terribly guilty and has a very complex relationship to his heterosexual past. The protagonist links his former life to an identity he no longer recognises —Catalonia, his friends, his family and, most remarkably, his mother. His becoming a gay man is achieved through the interaction with London’s gay scene and demands breaking with the past, which David seems unable to overcome; his incapability transforms him into a melancholic subject.