The Avowal of Difference

<p><b>Discusses how theories of queer performativity as articulated within the US Academy are unable to capture the whole of Latino American queer subjectivity and experience.</b></p><p><i>The Avowal of Difference</i> explores the potentialities and limitations that queer theory offers in the context of Latino American texts and subjects. Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui contrasts Latino American sexual genealogies with the Anglo-European coming out narrative-and interrogates the centrality of the coming out story as the regulating metaphor for gay lesbian or queer identities. In its place the book looks at other strategies-from silence to circumlocution from disavowal to indifference-to theorize queer subject formation in a Latino American cultural context. The analysis of texts by José Lezama Lima Luis Zapata Manuel Puig Severo Sarduy Junot Díaz and others offers a comparative approach to understanding how queer sexualities are shaped and written in other cultural contexts.</p>