José Donoso o el eros de la homofobia

Abstract

This article underscores the significance of José Donoso’s “Papers”, in the custody of Iowa University, in connection whith Julio Ortega’s ideas about them, as made known by the newpaper “La Tercera”, in Chile. In addition, a reading of homophobia as expression of a surreptitious eros, is made in the novels “El lugar sin límites” and in “El obsceno pájaro de la noche”. In contrast to the homoerotic discourse that Ortega detects in Donoso, the narrators in the two best known novels of the Chilean writer express a constant rejection of the marginal characters, or otherwise expose sodomy as a form which expresses the inferiority of the underling.