Theorizing Spanish Literature of Migration Across the Strai(gh)t: Envisioning Contradictory Spanish Futures

Scholars from both sides of the Mediterranean have recently theorized and attempted to classify literary woks representing irregular migration across the mare nostrum, and the potentially opportunistic accompanying publishing boom (mostly in French and Spanish) of novelistic and testimonial accounts about clandestine migrations. Considering pertinent critical and theoretical literature from French, Moroccan, and Spanish contexts as an anchor, in my presentation I will not propose new taxonomies of the “migrant text.” Instead, and from an intersectional analysis of gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer human rights activism, migration policies, and neoliberal practices, I will question the absence of discussions about the intersection of queer sexuality with migration theory by critics and theorists of the literature of migration across the Mediterranean. Specifically, I ask how we might theorize this illiterature, littérature migrante, or literatura de patera anew from the vantage point of queer sexualities. Framing my analysis of Spanish literature of migration within transnational theories about the attainment of LGBTQ legal rights in the context of international rights and subject-based discourses, I will analyze the contradictory political and social “homonationalist” (Jasbir K. Puar) futures that are envisioned for Spain in a few key literary texts.