Queer temporality in the narratives of the Spanish Transition. About La mala costumbre, by Alana S. Portero

Abstract

In recent decades, the studies about Spanish Transition have proliferated. This interest has enabled new dimensions of approach to the ways of constructing the narrative of the past. In this sense, the dynamics of unruly subjectivities (Chamouleau, 2017) around the queerness have become a focus of interest, due to their power of resistance in relation to a homogeneous and normalizing transitional narrative. In this direction, the narrative exploration around childhood and infancy shows a unique productivity. In this work we propose to investigate infancy as an emergent in the recent narrative of the Transition, based on a reading of the novel La mala costumbre (Seix Barral, 2023), by Alana S. Portero. We will be interested in critically dismantling the notion of queer temporality (Freeman, 2010; Dinshaw et al., 2007; Solana, 2016) based on the treatment of generation as the core of the construction of the transitional narrative that the novel proposes.