Laws of Desire: Questions of Homosexuality in Spanish Writing and Film, 1960-90 (Oxford Hispanic Studies) - Hardcover

Introducing the book with a brief account of some medical, legal, and polemical texts, Paul Julian Smith charts the varying representations of the feminist or gay "self" in autobiographical texts by Chacel, Goytisolo, and Terenci Moix. He goes on to offer radical readings of trilogies by Goytisolo and Tusquets, the major novelists of homosexual desire in Spain, in the light of influential French theorists Hocquenghem and Wittig. Finally, the author draws on archival research at the Filmoteca Nacional to offer a broadly historical account of Eloy de la Iglesia and Pedro Almodovar, the two major gay auteurs of post-Franco film. Particular attention is paid to their use of cinematic form, and the book ends with an analysis of Almodovar's "Atame!" ("Tie me Up! Tie me Down"). It is a film which exemplifies the main argument of this book that homosexuality is no unitary phenomenon, but rather a historical and libidinal construct inevitably inflected by gender, class, and regional identity.