The Discourse of Censorship and the Speculative Queermeneutics of Silence: the (In)Visibility of Safism in Postwar Spanish Narrative

Abstract

The motivation of this work arises from the concern to tentatively explore a genealogy of the sapphic representation in post-war Spanish literature. For this purpose, we intend to carry out a case study with four selected novels (Oculto sendero by Elena Fortún, Nada by Carmen Laforet, La colmena by Camilo José Cela and Entre visillos by Carmen Martín Gaite) where we will analyze the safism that is more or less explicitly included in them, implementing, where necessary, a speculative queermeneutics of silence from which we will project the sapphic potential upon the interpretative gaps of the text. Likewise, in order to evince the possible disappearance of female homosexuality in the narrative during the dictatorship, a comparison will be made with the representation of male homosexuality in them. This will allow us to evaluate whether the disappearance of homosexuality in post-war Spanish narrative was generalized or, on the contrary, especially implacable towards safism.

After the case studies, the results show an increasing tendency towards sapphic invisibility in the novels analyzed as we move into the midst of Francoist regime, a tendency that does not apply in the same way to male homosexuality. Given that the realistic novels of the Spanish postwar period can be interpreted almost as sociological capsules, the results confirm that, also in fiction, sapphism was non-existent or, often, it was hidden in the form of candid and innocent affection between girls.