Resumen de Voyeurism, literariness, and the lust of seeing: Sylvia Molloy reads Felisberto Hernandez before queer theory
Sylvia Molloy was doing queer theory "before queer theory," finding inconvenient and unruly impulses in the authors that she studied before 1991. Whether researching, reading, or remembering, she finds an erotic component in the act of seeing, and her 1981 novel "En breve cárcel" often echoes the tactic of occupying the hollowed-out or phantom male bodies of patriarchal institutions. The "disembodied" Borges that she found in French readings of Borges is countered in her own later treatment of him as a voracious, greedy reader; but it is only in her readings of Felisberto Hernández that she can fully turn the "básica extrañeza" of voyeurism into insights about the autobiographical project. Although she sidelined him due to her commitment to feminism and queer theory, Felisberto remains in Molloy's early oeuvre as a figure for the selfish small pleasures of uncommitted literature for its own sake.
