Malady and Genius: Self-sacrifice in Puerto Rican Literature (Suny Series, Insinuations: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Literature)

__Analyzes the theme of self-sacrifice in Puerto Rican literature through psychoanalytic theory.__ Contents 8 Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: Scenes of Self-Undoing 14 Psychoanalysis and Postcolonialism 17 Butler’s Detour 18 Back on Track 19 Malady and Genius of the Puerto Rican Soul 20 The Chapters of the Book 23 1 Psyche, History, Language, and Body in by Luis Rafael Sánchez 28 Psyche: Forgiving Cathartic Self-Violence 31 History: The Effect of the Lite-Colonial on the Psyche 36 Language: The Tragic Meaning of the Words of the Master 40 Body: From Affect to Sublimation 43 2 The Gift of Abjection 50 The Commonwealth and Its Weak Prohibitions 51 Readings of Marqués 53 A Different Approach to Abjection 54 An Old Approach to Abjection 56 The Docile Puerto Rican and His Discontents 60 Sublimation and the Maternal Abject 64 Ethical Reflections in La mirada 71 3 Vicissitudes of Perversion 80 Marqués and the Perverse Puerto Rican Subject 83 Ferré’s Roughhouse Aesthetics 87 A Zone of Incestuous Impulses 89 Foundational Matricide 96 The Master’s Fantasy 97 The Slave’s Fantasy 100 Spectacular Matricide 102 The Defensive Erotization of the Abject 104 4 Zona. Carga y Descarga 106 Zilia’s Zone 110 Sánchez’s Merversion 113 Myrna Báez’s Negatives and Dark Humor 116 Overexposures 121 Sarduy in Zona 125 An Anti-Boom Zone 127 Zona’s Herethical Abjection 134 5 Colonial Sublimations of a Noir Eros in “El Josco” and Two Detective Novels 138 The Erotic Fantasy in the Christian Passion 139 “El Josco,” A Colonial Sublimation of the Erotic Fantasy 140 Colonial Law, Culture, and Language 144 Detective Novels as Sublimations of the Language of Noir 146 Colonial Noir 147 Haunting Figures of Colonial Noir 149 The Victim Father 150 The Big Mother 152 The Split Son 154 Parricide the Colonial Way 155 The Cover-Up 157 Noir Grammar and Punctuation 160 The Survival of a Noir Eros 162 6 Shame, Repetition, and Forgiveness in Queer Latino Testimonio 164 Colonial Shame 165 Sinverguencería, pudor, and sentimiento 167 Social Melancholy 172 Hyperbolic Forgiveness 174 Reading and Writing Nonsense 176 Constitutive Shame 178 Repetition and Reversal 182 Conclusion: The Scene of Self-Sacrifice in Literary Discourse 186 Notes 192 Works Cited 216 Index 228 Malady and Genius examines the recurring theme of self-sacrifice in Puerto Rican literature during the second half of the twentieth and the beginning of the twenty-first centuries. Interpreting these scenes through the works of Frantz Fanon, Kelly Oliver, and Julia Kristeva, Benigno Trigo focuses on the context of colonialism and explains the meaning of this recurring theme as a mode of survival under a colonial condition that has lasted more than five hundred years in the oldest colony in the world. Trigo engages a number of works in Latino and Puerto Rican studies that have of late reconsidered the value of a psychoanalytic approach to texts and cultural material, and also different methodologies including post-colonial theory, cultural studies, and queer studies.