PEDRO LEMEBEL’S QUEER WORDS

From the Chilean author Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015), French readers know only one novel, Tengo miedo torero, published in 2001 in Chile and then in 2004 in France. It’s very little. We can hardly fall back on the (partial) online publications of his now famous queer poem, “Manifiesto (Hablo por mi diferencia)”. It was all the more unfortunate that Lemebel’s fictional writing only constitutes a very minor part of his literary works – not to mention his artistic output within the collective Las Yeguas del Apocalipsis (Mares of the Apocalypse). Lemebel is best known in Chile and in the Spanish-speaking world for his Chronicles, published in the press in 1991 then in book form in 1995, of which we can cite the following titles: Loco afán: Crónicas del sidario (1996), De perlas y cicatrices (1998) or Zanjón de la Aguada (2003). Thus, the French public has only a narrow vision of this author whose popularity does not cease growing – among the articles published since his death in 2015, the tribune of Paul B. Preciado in the newspaper Liberation “Pedro Lemebel, ton âme ne lâchera jamais“, and included in the collection Un appartement sur Uranus, is the most notable in France. Moreover, several documentaries – Lemebel by Joanna Reposi Garibaldi or even Pedro Lemebel: Corazón en Fuga by Verónica Qüense – and a film – My Tender Matador, adapted from his eponymous novel by the Chilean director Rodrigo Sepúlveda – have been made, although they are still struggling, on French territory, to obtain exploitation. Of course, the difficulty for the Lemebelian work of finding an editorial space in France can be explained, among other things, by a policy of publishing houses focused on the fictional market. However, one can wonder about a possible French-speaking transposition of the queer Lemebelian writing, whose semantic richness and grammatical inventiveness can pose serious translation issues – this is what we will discuss first. Indeed, gay transvestite author and activist Lemebel perfectly embodies the possibilities of queer writing. The reading of his only novel would be enough to convince of the emergence of a third writing in the international literary panorama. As if it were a question of debinarizing the language, of bending the syntax to the explosion of the cisgender and patriarchal schema, the Lemebelian writing seems to open a new way while fitting perfectly into a certain French queer tradition, as we will try to prove later.

As has been said, French readers only know of Pedro Lemebel’s work as a novel, Tengo miedo torero. However, if any transposition from one language to another is never without causing problems, it is all the more obvious for a text whose central character is a queer hero, carrying with him his flood of lexicons from sexual minorities, his plethora of words borrowed from a very specific politico-cultural context. So that comparing Lemebel’s original text and Alexandra Carrasco’s very respectable translation reveals gaps and dissonances that are particularly interesting for the comparative analysis of queer French and Chilean vocabularies. If the transposition into French by Alexandra Carrasco sticks as closely as possible to the original text, certain expressions, certain idiolects, require the use of more or less happy French-speaking equivalents. Without even mentioning the Spanish grammatical peculiarities, of which the pronominal ellipse is undoubtedly, in this case, the most notable. In fact, if Spanish can do without pronouns, and consequently genders, French is almost incapable of doing so. We can divide into three large groups the lexicons used by Lemebel to designate his main character that only a periphrasis, the “Loca del Frente”, allows to mention: taxonomic terms, insults and tropes (or lexical inventions) specific to Lemebel. Taxonomic terms are rare: it is about breaking away from the divisive, binarizing and reductive categorizations in which modern society encloses minorized sexual identities. There are two: “transvestite” and “homosexual”. First of all, it must be remembered that the concept of “transvestite” does not have the same meaning in France as in Latin America. Deeply marked by psychoanalytic literature, both in its Freudian and Lacanian contributions, the French term “transvestite” would rather designate the type of fetishist heterosexual expressing in temporary, instinctual travesty, a repressed homosexuality and/or the absence of dephallicization of the maternal figure. If Latin America was not spared by the Freudian reading of the act of cross-dressing, the term has retained a carnival seme – weakened in French – to designate a character expressing a gender other than the one socially expected. There are five occurrences of the term “transvestite” including three in an adjectival form, as here this hypallage:

…l’air carnavalisé par son geste travesti (p. 37)

…el aire carnavalizado por su gesto travesti. (p. 39)

As for the term “homosexual”, it occurs most often in the judgments of the characters on the “Queen of the corner”. It is Pinochet first who sees her/him from afar with Carlos exclaims:

C’étaient des homosexuels, un couple d’homosexuels. (p. 46)

Eran homosexuales, mujer, dos homosexuales. (p. 48)

There is also the tattletales, his neighbors, who designate him as follows:

J’ai vu cet homosexuel ouvrir la porte à tous ces garçons après le couvre-feu. (p. 157)

Yo vi a ese homosexual cuando les abría la puerta en el toque de queda a tantos muchachos. (p. 180)

Insults require more flexibility on the part of the translator. They often come from a lexical misuse or slang usage. In Lemebel, the insult is used to designate the character. The stake is that of a reappropriation. “La Loca” re-signifies insults. From then on, the nomination, initially stigmatizing, becomes empowering. In this game, the word “maricón” is the big winner. Alexandra Carrasco translates it as “pédé” (“queer”) or “tapette” (“fagot”) as you choose, as in this accumulation that scans the insult to better demonstrate the passage from shame to pride, from stigma to empowering identity:

… pédé solitaire, pédé assoiffé de « baisers sorciers », pédé drogué par le toucher imaginaire, d’une main cerf-volant effleurant le ciel trouble de la chair, pédé infiniment prisonnier de sa cage de lépreuse tapette, pédé rococo attrapé dans sa mélancolique toile d’araignée de frisettes et d’artifices, pédé chichiteux, emmêlé, pris dans les fils de sa propre trame. (p. 37)

…maricón solo, el maricón hambriento de “besos brujos”, el maricón drogado por e1 tacto imaginario de una mano volantín rozando el cielo turbio de su carne, el maricón ínfimamente preso por la lepra coliflora de su jaula, el maricón trululú, atrapado en su telaraña  melancolía de rizos y embelecos, el maricón rififí, entretejido, hilvanado en los pespuntes de su propia trama. (p. 38)

This anaphora clearly shows the way in which Lemebel proceeds to resignify a term that was originally offensive and stigmatizing: its anaphoric iteration followed by lyrical metaphorical formulas (“una mano volantín”/“a kite hand”; etc.) makes it possible to cancel the insult contained in the word, to revitalize it by infusing it with a new meaning. This is what Butler explains in The Power of Words:

To take up the name that one is called is no simple submission to prior authority, for the name is already unmoored from prior context, and entered into the labor of self-definition. The word that wounds becomes an instrument of resistance in the redeployment that destroys the prior territory of its operation. (p. 163)

It is therefore by the iteration of the insult, by its anchoring in a poetic, lyricized language, that Lemebel succeeds in deflecting the insult and brandishing it as a banner of identity. This is also what he does with the word “Loca” (Queen), which it would be pointless to calculate since the main protagonist is only mentioned by means of the periphrasis of the “Loca del Frente“. If Lemebel uses an insult to identify his/her character, it is both to mark him/her with the social stigma that defines him/her in the eyes of all and to allow him/her to resemantize the insult to the point of recasting it into a political identity. Let us content ourselves with adding to the iteration and lyricization techniques that of grammatical diversion, which is one of the author’s striking stylistic features. As if to better queerize his writing, to twist the syntax better and hold out the mirror of the transvestite to the world, Lemebel plays with grammatical classes, subjectivizes adjectives, adjectivizes substantives. Thus, in these two expressions: “clima maricón” (p. 58) and “risas maricones” (p. 66) which Alexandra Carrasco wrongly translates as “ce temps de pédé” (p. 55) then “leur rire de tapette” (p. 61); wrongly because the translation corrects the original and does not suggest the slight dissonance of the grammatical diversion: “ce temps pédé“, “leurs rires tapettes“. We can speak here of a maxima metaphor, that is, the affixing of two substantives without connecting words: “su estambre coliflor” (p. 104) that the translator intelligently renders with “son étamine tapette” (p. 95, “her fagot stamen”). Coliflor, maricón, mariflor, so many words that Alexandre Carrasco translates as “pédé” or “tapette“. We can see that queer writing would need an equally queer translation. This would make it possible to offer French readers the wealth of Lemebel’s verbal inventions such as these “gruesas ancas de yegua coliflor” (p. 22) whose French adaptation gives: “ses larges hanches de jument tapette” (ibid.) without making its specificity heard (coliflor), by confusing it by the same translation with “maricón”. What the translator does elsewhere by giving “pédale chou-fleur bleu” (“queer cauliflower”) as a translation to the metaphorical expression “brócoli mariflor” (ibid.). It would be impossible without a footnote to make it understood that the vegetable metaphor logically derives from the usual insult “coliflor” allowing Lemebel to forge this twisted and poetic expression of “brócoli mariflor” to designate the Loca and, through it, all transvestites, transgender and feminized homosexuals whose author pays here a sensitive and epic tribute.

The fact remains that the Lemebelian fictional work, in spite of its peculiarities, resonates with a certain tradition of French or North American trans-pédé-gouine literature; if not in resonance, at least in contradiction. It is inevitable to think of Jean Genet and the various representations he gives of transvestite characters (Divine of OurLady-Of-The-Flowers) or homosexuals (the narrator Jean of many novels). It is unclear whether Lemebel’s “Loca del frente” was inspired by Divine. At least there are obvious commonalities that bring them together in a literary trans sisterhood. They are both already old Queens whom the signs of aging do not spare. Bald, wrinkled, toothless, they showcase a twisted body that only make-up and accessoirisation come to aestheticize. Of Divine, one mention “la peau trop blanche et sèche, la maigreur, les cavités des yeux, les rides poudrées, les cheveux collés, les dents d’or” (GENET, 1976, p. 157). We also know this illustrious scene where the transvestite from Montmartre crowns himself with his artificial teeth, the better to become, finally, the absolute “Queen”:

De sa bouche ouverte, elle arrache son dentier, le pose sur son crâne et, le cœur dans la gorge mais victorieuse, elle s’écrie d’une voix changée, et les lèvres rentrées dans la bouche : – Eh bien, merde, mesdames, je serai reine quand même. (p. 211)

The Lemebelian narrator stages the same emaciated body and underlines in his character the “gencives dégarnies” (p. 50, “receding gums”) (“encías despobladas”, p. 53). Further on, the Queen’s lips turned out to be ” froncées à cause de l’absence de son dentier” (p. 108, “wrinkled because of the absence of her dentures”) (“con los labios fruncidos por la ausencia de la placa dental“, p. 121). The bodies of Divine and the Queen of the corner have too much in common not to belong to the same modern fictional tradition of the transvestite. The mouth softened by the absence of teeth shows on the face of the transvestite a subliminal vagina, a fantasy sex. There is also a certain queer morbidity expressed by these decidedly twisted bodies. Lemebel, whose commitment to AIDS patients is known, and Genet, then in the midst of the Nazi occupation, can only place their character in a morbid, painful perspective: the queer identity is truly unlivable. But the big difference between Lemebel and Genet lies in the finality they give to the destiny of their character. The Queen of the corner does not know the tragic fate of Divine. Lemebel gives the fate of “la Loca” another dimension: empowerment through political action. The figure of the Lemebelian homosexual also diverges from masculine Western representations such as we can find for example in Guillaume Dustan – although the signifiers of femininity remain attached to the narrator of novels such as In My Room (1996). In fact, Pedro Lemebel by staging the character of a heroized Queen implicitly opposes queer American representations made hegemonic in the eighties. Especially since the transvestite in the novel is not a white petty bourgeois but a racialized character from the popular classes of Santiago. The narrator insists on his poverty (shabby housing, sewing work, prostitution) and his “traits basanés” (84, “swarthy features”). In short, he challenges the hyper-virilism of a homosexuality imported from the United States (leather register, white t-shirt, short hair and mustache). For him, playing virility comes down to being satisfied with binarism and male hegemony, while favoring a form of radical and militant follosophy would make it possible to question them, to thwart them. As Diana Palaversich explains:

He completely rejects North American and Western European theorists’ reading of the masculinization of the homosexual as a subversive reconstruction of a new, ironic gay masculinity (PALAVERSICH, 2002, p. 103).

Thus, the character of the Queen of the corner is conceived and constructed in contradiction with the dominant models of representations of homosexual masculinities. At Lemebel, queer thinking is linked with care (the transvestite is a mother for the resistant), class (proletariat/lumpenproletariat) and race (she is mixed, swarthy). La Loca embodies all the sexual minorities figures defended by Lemebel in his Chronicles: poor, exuberant, feminine, militant, racialized. The author shares many traits and characteristics with his creation, he who declared himself “homosexual, poor, Indian and poorly dressed” (IÑIGUEZ, 1996, p. 42).

To cite this notice

Frezzato, Romain: “Les mots tordus de Pedro Lemebel : Tengo miedo torero / Je tremble, ô Matador”. Dictionnaire du genre en traduction / Dictionary of Gender in Translation / Diccionario del género en traducción. Published on 04 November 2021: https://worldgender.cnrs.fr/les-mots-tordus-de-pedro-lemebel–tengo-miedo-torero-je-tremble-o-matador/

References

Butler, Judith (1990), Ces corps qui comptent. De la matérialité et des limites discursives du sexe, trad. Charlotte Nordmann, Éditions Amsterdam, Paris.

Butler, Judith (2004), Le Pouvoir des mots. Discours de haine et politique du performatif, trad. Charlotte Nordmann & J. Vidal, Éditions Amsterdam, Paris.

Carvajal, Fernanda (2017), « Les traces de Pedro LEMEBEL », in Politiques de la nuit, Cultures & Conflits, printemps/été 2017, mis en ligne le 15 juillet 2017, consulté le 20 juin 2019. URL : http://conflits.revues.org/19500.

Dustan, Guillaume (1996), Dans ma chambre, P.O.L., Paris.

Genet, Jean (1976), Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, Folio, Paris.

Iñiguez, Ignacio (1996), « Pecar por ser diferente », La Nación, p. 42-43.

Lemebel, Pedro (2001), Tengo miedo torero, Seix Barral, Santiago de Chile.

Lemebel, Pedro (2004), Je tremble, ô Matador, trad. Alexandra Carrasco, Denoël, Paris.

López-García, Isabelle (2007), La Question du genre dans les chroniques de Pedro Lemebel. Thèse de doctorat, Études romanes, Université Paris-Sorbonne.

Navavarrete Higuera, Carolina (2015), La Construction des subjectivités dans les chroniques de Lemebel. Thèse de Doctorat, Études ibériques et méditerranéennes, Spécialité Espagnol, Université Lumière Lyon 2.

Palaversich, Diana (2002), « The Wounded Body of Proletarian Homosexuality in Pedro Lemebel’s Loco afán », Latin American Perspectives, 29 (2), p. 99-118.


ÉTIQUETTES

drag, gender, novel, queer writing