‘Gay’ authorship’s construction as a cultural crack in Chile’s post dictatorship

Juan Pablo Sutherland’s Ángeles Negros (part 1)

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the inscription of Ángeles negros (1994) by Juan Pablo Sutherland in the post-dictatorship’s cultural field, based on the ‘gay autorship’ term. On the 30^th anniversary of its publication, this article conceives itself as the introduction of my Ángeles negros investigation, that will be followed by a literary-aesthetic analysis of the short stories book. This first part is a culturalist literary analysis of the critical reception on the press, in order to elucidate, in historic perspective, in which discursive area it’s located the ‘cultural riot’ (Robles) laid on this literary text. This book’s publication made clear through a media scandal the tensions between homoerotic writing, market, and the cultural politics of the newborn democratic state.  Through the sociological and paratextual perspective, we will review the different public interventions that constructed the ‘gay’ autorship in the Chilean post-dictatorial cultural field. It will be established that its tactic relevance consists in explaining the heteronormative character of the aesthetic-literary assessment and inaugurating a diverse publishing market. I claim this is the first Chilean homosexual autorship.