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279 Pages·2012·31.84 MB·English

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This is to certify that the
dissertation entitled
GLOBAL DESIRES: [RE]CREATION, SEX, AND SURVIVAL
IN CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVE OF THE
HISPANOPHONE CARIBBEAN
presented by
CHRISTOPHER ALAN MCGRATH
has been accepted towards fulfillment
ofthe requirements forthe
Doctoral degree in Hispanic Cultural Studies

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GLOBAL DESIRES: [RE]CREATION, SEX, AND SURVIVAL IN
CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVE OF THE HISPANOPHONE CARIBBEAN
By
Christopher Alan McGrath
A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements
forthe degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Hispanic Cultural Studies
2010
ABSTRACT
GLOBAL DESIRES: [RE]CREATION, SEX, AND SURVIVAL IN
CONTEMPORARY NARRATIVE OF THE HISPANOPHONE CARIBBEAN
By
ChristopherAlan McGrath
This study considers recent narrative fiction ofthe Hispanophone Caribbean to
analyzehow several authors are constructingthe area’s emergent cultural imaginaryby
textuallymapping “contactzones” createdthrough transnational flows ofcapital and
humanbodies—especially as these are articulated through tourismand, in particular, sex
tourism. The specific texts underconsideration include several short stories by
Dominican authorAurora Arias taken from hercollectionsFindemundo (2000),Invi’s
Paradiseyotros cuentos (1998), and Emoticons (2007); the literary autoethnography
“De unpajaro las dos alas” (2009) by Puerto Rican author Larry La Fountain-Stokes; the
short story “La causa que refresca” (1998) by CubanwriterJosé Miguel Sénchez (Yoss);
the short story “Los aretes que le faltan a la luna” (2000) by Cuban authorAngel
Santiesteban; the testimonioJineteras (2006) and the novel Tatuajes (2007) by Cuban
writerAmirValle.
This studyuses an interdisciplinary approach that draws from literary analysis,
sociology, anthropology, postcolonial studies, genderstudies, and discourse theory to
demonstratehowthese works explore multiple social forces, daily life events, and
historical processes thatmakeup contemporary vital experience within the region. As
they sketch the spaces where local and foreign social actors meet in the context of
commodified sexuality, these texts show those places to be constitutedby structural and
personalized forms ofdomination, resistance, negotiation, gain, loss, potential, and risk
within conditions ofmarked socioeconomic disparity. These settings ultimatelybecome
discursive sitesby which the authors treated in this study construct a dialogics of
sexualized encounterthrough which local selves articulate theirrelation to theirforeign
Otherand to national powerstructures.
In chapterone, I contend thatArias’s works attempt to textually apprehendthe
ephemeral male tourist Otherand the forces which his presence sets in motion—forces
rooted in, indeed, reiterative of, colonial practice and discourse that continue to shape
contemporary Dominican social experience and space. Ultimately, I argue that these
texts offerthemselves as counter-narratives to hegemonic representations ofthe
Caribbean andthe praxis that accompanies and reinforces it. In chaptertwo, I analyze
the works ofLaFountain-Stokes, Sénchez, and Santiesteban to argue that, while
concernedwith the interplay ofdiscursive structures and social processes in shaping local
experience, theirprimary focus is on the constitution ofsubjects in theplaces where such
social forces converge. Specifically, I argue thatthese texts, responding to a fimdamental
tension increasingly feltatboth the social and the discursive levels within Cuba ofthe
special period, take as theircentral theme the constitution ofparticulartypes of
subjectivities indicative ofthat sociohistorical moment. In chapterthree, I focus onhow
Valle’s texts constitute adiscursive projectthat examines the most sordid side ofwhat it
terms the “humanputrefaction” that comprisesjineterismo, seeking to cleanse the Cuban
nation. In spite oftheirexpress attempts at discursive purification however, Valle’s texts,
drivenby the impulse ofabjection, ultimately reify thejinetera as a simultaneous object
ofrepulsion and desire, theirdiscourse a fragmenting andmisogynisticpornographos.
Copyrightby
CHRISTOPHER ALAN MCGRATH
2010
In loving memory to myfather Thomas J. McGrath, whose labor is still bearingfruit.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To the members ofmy committee—Miguel Cabanas, Michael Largey, Maria
Mudrovcic, and Kristine Byron—I thank you foryour dedication and investment in my
professional development. Each ofyou in your own way has served as a model and
source ofinspiration to me as a scholar and a teacher. In particular, I thank my director
Miguel Cabanas, who has borne the majority ofthe burden in shepherding the writing of
this dissertation. Your feedback and support have been invaluable in the successful
completion ofthis project. I would like to thank the College ofArts and Letters of
Michigan State University for the 2010 Summer Support Fellowship which assisted me in
the final stages ofwriting, revising, and defending this dissertation. I would also like to
thank the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Michigan State University
forthe Summer Field Research Fellowship which made possible my first trip to the
Dominican Republic in 2005 and proved pivotal for the direction this study would take.
My thanks also go the department ofSpanish and Portuguese at Michigan State
University for travel monies, instructorships, and other forms ofsupport. Finally, I
would like to thank my family for all their support, encouragement, and patience—my
motherArlene F. McGrath, my two beautiful children Ariel Nicole and Aidan Joseph,
and my loving wife, whose words served as the spark for this project.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
Global Processes, Colonial Legacies...............................................................1
CHAPTER 1
Searching for la vida verdaa’era in the Dominican Republic: A Dialectical View........37
CHAPTER 2
Cuba Part 1: Performing Subjectivities ofthe Special Period...............................110
CHAPTER 3
Cuba Part II: The Staging ofa National Abjection............................................180
CONCLUSION
Toward a Dialogics ofSexualized Encounter..................................................247
WORKS CITED...................................................................................253
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