Lecture Notes for Esther
Tusquets
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Writing the Same with a Difference:
The Trilogy of Esther Tusquets
El mismo mar de todos los veranos (1978)
El amor es un juego solitario (1979)
[Varada tras el último naufragio (1980)]
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Explicit sexuality in her novels is aimed at revealing that sexual
practices which we assume to be "natural" are bound up with "fictive" constructs.
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Relationship to topics on SP9:
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Definitions of Self:
- heterosexual gender roles presented as a "compelled performance"
- sexual identity models itself on previous images and texts = a kind
of mime or imitation
- problematization of "natural" sexual behaviour and "natural" identities
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Metaphors of Exile:
- "exile" not to be taken politically
- the Lesbian and lesbian sexuality is constructed
as marginal to heterosexual society
- heterosexuality exposed as empty miming of
some prior, "original" state of unity (fictive)
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Repetition as major theme
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Repetition of names across the trilogy (Clara, Elia,
Jorge)
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But repetition with a difference? (El mismo
mar todos los veranos)
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El mismo mar de todos los veranos
(1)
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Novel opens with narrator's return to childhood flat
- self-imposed exile
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Initiates affair with a student, Clara (Colombian)
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Colombia staged (with irony) as exotic, faraway land
= fantasies of otherness
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Fantasy of otherness underlying sexual desire
= lesbian fantasy in this novel
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El amor es un juego solitario
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Also opens with sexual fantasy (heterosexual), in
which gender is reduced to nature (see Paul Julian Smith on this)
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Heterosexuality grounds itself as "natural"
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Nature as power's most productive effect (Judith
Butler)
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"Mise en scène" of sexuality
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The novel recounts Elia's affair with adolescent
Ricardo, friend of Clara's
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Recounts seduction of Clara by Elia, at Ricardo's
request
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Contradiction of Ricardo as "simio poeta"
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Re-enactment of childhood fantasy with incongruous
actors
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Heterosexuality staged as performance and artificial
literary construct
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Butler on repetition (French, rehearsal) and
re-enactment underlying sexual ritual
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Fictive sex
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El mismo mar de todos los veranos
(2)
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Does lesbian sexuality escape these paradigms?
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Importance of literary fantasies in text
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Re-enactment of mother-daughter relationship
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The quesiton of "feminine language" ("palabras terribles,
tan extrañas")
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Contrast to masculine control of language
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Relate to Tusquets' style - escritura femenina??
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Myth of heterosexual disappointment underlying homosexuality
- novel complicit with this in story of Jorge?
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Return to "compulsory" heterosexuality at end
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