Author: megamind

“What is time made of?” 

“Time isn’t made of anything. It is an abstraction. Just a meaning that we impose upon motion.” 

Autobiography of Red warps time in a different manner than our other texts have. With Cereus Blooms at Night and Written on the Body, and even LOCA, time has moved non-chronologically, shifting between past and present fluidly (in its prose), but sometimes abruptly in execution. Here, however, time moves from past to present, Geryon and Herakles age, and life continues on. From the wired telephone to the television, society has advanced as well. Despite the linear progression of the story, however, something about the dynamic of time is still off. These characters are not originally of the time in which this narrative is set. They are figures from the past that have been thrust into the future, remolded to fit in that world, but still inherently their original selves. In retelling this myth, Carson has suggested that these characters can –and do– exist independently from time, and can live at any time –just as queer people have and do. 

In this way, Carson has queered time by weaving the past and present together (merging ancient myth with present time), and has also rendered time irrelevant (also queering time, but differently). The second example of queer time –in which time means nothing– is not only evident in the narrative composition, but also thematically within the story. Geryon is not only fixated on what time is and why, but his main hobby –photography– is disrupting time by pausing and preserving it. With his photos, the “then” becomes permanent through the photograph. That moment is then able to occupy a type of existence in continuity for the rest of time, not just when the moment originally happened, just as Herakles and Geryon occupy a time period in this narrative long past when their original myth takes place.

“Now the fact of the matter is that you are not the first or the only one of your kind in this place. You grow up here and you don’t realize almost everybody in this place wish they could be somebody or something else? That is the story of life here in Lantanacamara.” (237-8)

Otoh’s mother unpacks quite a bit in this statement, with all facets pointing towards the oppression of non-conforming identities. First, she adresses, inadvertently, the erasure of queer narratives, even in the conciousness of other queer individuals. By suggesting that Otoh is unaware that there are, and have been, others like him (referring to trans identities in Lantanacamara), she implies that their identities have been silenced or erased. We can reason that this is either because they pass as cisgender as well as Otoh does, or that they have been driven out, ostracized, or silenced due to shame.

Furthermore, it is suggested that it is not just trans lives that are hidden from public knowledge. Rather, it appears that everyone in Lantanacamara has an aspect of their identity that they falsely present to the public –that is, everyone wishes they could change some part of who they are in order to live what they authentically feel they are, or should be. By saying that “almost everybody . . . wish they could be somebody or something else”, it becomes apparent that everyone’s identity has been silenced in some manner because they are unable to authentically represent themselves. In this way, everyone in Lantanacamara is queer –not necessarily in the current sense of the word, but in the older form, simply meaning “odd”/ “different”. This may be a result of an internally oppressive societal nature, but likely also a result of the theme of settler sexuality. The impact of this –from colonization– results in a lack of flexibility/fluidity in identity/sexuality, resulting in the notion that everyone who is not a colonizer is “odd” and must be “fixed” so that they conform to the ideology of what is “right” in the minds of the colonizers. Thus, it is not just queer individuals –such as trans identities– who would be hidden/oppressed; everyone becomes alienated, and, thus, is queer in some manner.

Title is a quote by Welsh businessman and political philosopher Robert Owen in 1828; his use of “queer” here is meant in the original context of “strange”/”odd”/”different”.

Rather than comment on a singular passage, I would like to expand on a character. Renata/Ren, who is introduced in “You’re the Only Friend I Need” and reappears in Loca, encapsulates how race, gender, sexuality, and more compound to form a singular human identity, as explained by Eli Clare:

“Gender reaches into disability; disability wraps around class; class strains against abuse; abuse snarls into sexuality; sexuality folds on top of race…everything finally piling into a single human body. To write about any aspect of identity, any aspect of the body, means writing about this entire maze.” (Eli Clare)

Alejandro Heredia’s work delves into this quotation, presenting a range of characters that display this “maze” of identity, attempting to discern what exactly makes them who they are. Most importantly, they want to concretely know who they are to –and in– themselves.

In the case of Ren, there are seemingly two people within one body: the majority of the time, Ren outwardly presents as a man, only “transforming” into a woman in certain spaces. It is even said that she “is a different person” at the night parties, demonstrating the coexistence of two dual identities (Loca). This also highlights how, as we’ve discussed, not all aspects of one’s identity are expressed at a given moment. Under the cloak of night, Ren is free to be Renata, a privilege that is otherwise inaccessible –because it is physically unsafe– in the machismo culture of the DR (which has an entire section of vocabulary intended to alienate, mock, and project hatred onto queer identities). This racial aspect, coupled with the political climate of the world at large in the 90’s (and prior), greatly impacts Ren/Renata’s ability to authentically express their gender identity and sexuality, a dilemma that also impacts Yadiel (who is a development of Fabio in Loca). Without revealing the plot, these two characters confront and navigate the threat of their identities in an effort to authentically live their whole identities: race, gender, sexuality, and more combined in one body, living their truth.

In Loca, Heredia does not just write about these bodies and the complexity of the identities that inhabit them, he writes about what it means to navigate these identity facets within ourselves, the struggle it can be to reconcile all of the aspects into a clear picture, and the uncertainty that can plague much of the journey of self-discovery (to avoid spoilers, there is a specific quotation in Loca that I will tag after we read it for class).

“No silent films were shot in colour but the pictures through a window are that. Everything moves in curious clockwork animation. Why is that man throwing up his arms? The girl’s hands move soundlessly over the piano. Only half an inch of glass separates me from the silent world where I do not exist. They don’t know I’m here but I have begun to be as intimate with them as any member of the family. More so, since their lips move with goldfish bowl pouts, I am the scriptwriter and I can put words in their mouths.” (59)

This passage comments on numerous important aspects of the narrator’s story and identity. First, this passage poses the narrator as a voyeur, peering into other people’s lives without their knowledge. Much like the film Rear Window, the narrator imposes their own perspective and assumptions onto the subjects they have cast in their window movie, invading their privacy as they have imposed themself into a world where they “do not” –should not– “exist”. Furthermore, the narrator is “putting words in their mouths”, implying that they are unable to accurately depict the stories which they are observing, but still imposing judgment on them. In this instance, it would be impossible to articulate the lives of the window people as they are meant to be unheard, within the privacy of their homes; however, this offers a commentary on the unreliableness of the narrator that is blatantly displayed in the narration of their own story. It also displays a dynamic shift in the conventions of “normalcy”. 

The identity of a voyeur is one that falls within the “unsavory” area of the diagram of sexual/romantic preferences; although this voyeurism is not sexual in nature, its broader concept still applies, further alienating the narrator to the right side of the wall diagram. This bolsters the narrator’s separation from the “normal”. However, it is the subjects, not the narrator, who are “hidden” –limited to the confines of their box– even though they seemingly comply with all aspects of the “normal” (a man and woman inside a home, one can assume that they are in some form of relationship that either qualifies as, or is moving toward, marriage). This has, therefore, reversed the expected dynamic between the narrator and those inside the house: the “normal” has become the hidden, and the hidden has become the judger of the concealed “normal”. 

This shift also reveals the narrator’s desires. The use of a “window”, in addition to making the narrator a voyeur, displays their longing for what the figures on the other side of the window have. This is because we often desire that which we cannot –or should not– have (what is relegated to confined areas of society). This generally references “normal” people having suppressed desires to partake in “abnormal” behaviors; however, in this case, it demonstrates the “abnormal” narrator’s desire to have what the “normal” have. 

Notes:

Post title is adapted from “Rear Window’s Glasshole”, which views the voyeurism in Rear Window through a queer lens: “Suppose, however, one came at the question of vision from what a binary system construes as the “other” side.” (Lee Edelman)