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Review: [untitled] Author(s): David William Foster Source: World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 3, Contemporary Australian Literature (Summer, 1993), p. 591 Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40149395 . Accessed: 22/10/2011 18:31
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SPANISH Fiction
Barcelona. Robin Book. Diana Raznovich.Matererotica. 1992. 208 pages. There has never been any doubt as to exactlywhere has been going with her writing:in DianaRaznovich all three of the majorgenres the Argentinewriterhas addressedin highly imaginative waystopics relating to gender and sexualidentityand has undertakenthe enormous projectof constructingan erotic discoursethat has some erotica consistsof sort of sociopoliticalmeaningto it. Mater two narratives, the first about twiceas long as the second. In both cases,the fall of the BerlinWallis the backdropto an erotic experience. In the first case it is between the wife of a memberof the EastGermanhigh commandand a friend of her teenage son; in the second case it is between a double agent of both Germanieswho, under a death threat,livesout a sexualidyllwith a sixteen-year-old woman.In both cases the storyis told in the first person in both cases an element of bisexby the older individual; ualityis involved;in both cases there is some element of gender role exchange; and in both cases there is reference to the climate of sexual repressionthat functionsin all of Westernsociety,with establishmentsocialismbeing as Draconianas capitalist democracy. in However,there is more of a narrativetransgression the case of the older woman and more of a narrativeof sexual exploitationin the case of the second. What Raznovichseems to be staginghere is ajuxtapositionbetween In the second narthe radicaldifferencesin perspectives. - the cynical double rativeit is a masculinistperspective agent who lives out the hours before he is assassinated availinghimself effordesslyof the body of an essentially powerlesswoman, all in the context of free and libertine in all its heterosexistmytholoParis,the capitalof "Love" in the context of the first In the and narrative, longer gy. masculinistrepressionof female sexualityin an establishWestern ment socialismthat is homologous to traditional and Christianvalues, a feminist discourse is forged in which the fleshquakesof an awakenedsexualityforeshadthe womanproducesin the ow the structural earthquakes societyaroundher. Raznovichmakes use of many of the conventions of masculinist beginning with the fact that, as pornography, an Argentine,she chooses to writein an urbanPeninsular dialect that providesher with a voice jarringlydifferent which is much like the stiltedlanfrom her other writings, guage of her generic models. Moreover,the setting of reboth storiesin societies that are not Spanish-speaking inforcesthe othernessof her texts, although the first one is more marked than the second in this regard. From a feminist point of view, pornography (which is what Raznovichseems to be reiterating in the second, masculinist-based story) is a profound dystopiathat overlaps in significantways with the actual society of the male abuser, the female victim, and voyeuristicreaderswhose gender identities position them in variouswayswith respect to that dystopiaand mayeven remodel it as a fantastic Utopiathere to lead one out of the sexual conflictsof the real world (both for those who abuse and for those who have internalizedabuse as an ideal to be sought). Raznovich 's proposition, in the first and feminist narrative,begins by configuringa dystopiathat the noncommunist-blocreader is asked to graspas reduplicatingcapitalist society and then to accept the possibilityof creatinga Utopianspace withinit based on a series of transgressions that installwomanas sexual agent, with an agencythat replaces feminine lack with a force capable of invalidating masculinistmale phallic power.The first-person narrative underscoresthe greater presence of the woman who no Mater but articulates longer speaksthe stasisof the stabat the agency of the Mater who will reconfiguresocierotica, ety in a liberatingand nonphallicfashion. Despite the elements of bisexualityin both narratives, Raznovich 's texts are ultimately resolutely heterosexist and genitalist,which means that her emphasis is on female/male sexual politics rather than alternate sexualities. Nevertheless, withinthis role frame (whichalso reduplicates conventional pornography), there is enough erotic deliriumto demonstratethat even within traditional male/female roles there is a promise for sexual liberation.
David WilliamFoster ArizonaState University

Criticism
Jose Luis Calvo Carilla. Quevedoy la generacion del 27

1992. 198 pages. (1927-1936).Valencia,Sp. Pre-Textos.

The tide of Jose Luis CalvoCarilla' s studyis mislead's deep and general ing: in order to show Quevedo penetrationinto Spanishlettersin the thirties,the author documents his presence since Unamuno, including also such heterogeneous figures as Vallejo, Neruda, Ramon Sije, and Miguel Hernandez. His intention is to correct the unilateralfocus adopted by a number of criticswhen discussingthe poets of the 1927 group: their affiliation with Gongora'sesthetics, and the too narrowinterpretation of the term deshumanizacion del arte.Calvo Carilla shows, in a thoroughly documented and clearly argued exposition, that the homage to Goyacelebratedverylitde after that of Gongorahelped turn the cards.With the revival of interest in Goya, Quevedo's influence enters in such worksas Valle-Inclan's Ramon'sgreguerias, esperpentos, and Bunuel'sfilms.To Ortegay Gassetand the Revista del Occidente (whichis not given due credit or discussedsufficiently) he opposes Cruz y Raya,which favorsneoromanticism and a new spirituality. (It would not have been amiss to insiston the dates:the Revista delOccidente wasfounded