Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America

From its sweaty beats to the pulsating music on the streets, Latin/o America is perceived in the United States as the land of heat, the toy store for Western sex. It is the territory of magical fantasy and of revolutionary threat, where topography is the travel guide of desire, directing imperial voyeurs to the exhibition of the flesh.
Jose Quiroga flips the stereotype upside down: he shows how Latin/o American lesbians and gay men have consistently eschewed notions of sexual identity for a politics of intervention. In Tropics of Desire, Quiroga reads hesitant Mexican poets as sex-positive voices, he questions how outing and identity politics can fall prey to the manipulations of the state, and explores how invisibility has been used as a tactical tool in opposition to the universal imperative to come out.
Drawing on diverse cultural examples such as the performance of bolero and salsa, film, literature, and correspondence, and influenced by masters like Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and a rich tradition of Latin American stylists, Quiroga argues for a politics that denies biological determinism and cannibalizes cultural stereotypes for the sake of political action.

Author: Jose A. Quiroga
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 11/01/2000
Pages: 302
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.99lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.68d
ISBN: 9780814769539

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2001 pg. 106

About the Author
Quiroga, Jose A.: - Jose Quiroga is Professor of Spanish at The George Washington University and author of Understanding Octavio Paz.