Queer life-writing and illness in Spain (1956-2018)

This thesis examines the representations of illness in Spanish queer life-writing from 1956 to 2018 to establish their epistemologies of illness: the ways Spanish authors comprehend illness in their lives and its intertwinement with sociocultural notions of sexuality and bodily and mental dysfunction. Following a queer materialist approach, predicated upon the fact that ma-terial conditions, whether economic, social, physical or mental, impact one’s subjectivity, agen-cy and writing, this thesis argues that reading a range of texts in the mode of life-writing al-lows for a better understanding of the ways queer authors have navigated stigma, politics, and personal suffering. This research is the first comprehensive, comparative study of the episte-mology of illness and sexuality in Spanish life-writing from 1956 to the present day.
Chapter One focuses on personal diaries, emphasising the tension between diary-writing and truth-telling via the work of Jaime Gil de Biedma and David Vilaseca. Chapter Two examines the lyrical/autobiographical work of Leopoldo María Panero and of Pepe Espaliú, to test the limits between poetry and life-writing. Chapter Three turns to autofictional/autobiographical novels through the work of Antonio Roig and Eva Baltasar.
By looking at this carefully selected, diverse textual corpus, this thesis provides an interdisci-plinary contribution to areas such as medical humanities and literary theory. Ultimately, this research establishes that 20th and 21st century Spanish queer authors mobilise illness not just as a purely physical or mental circumstance in their lives, but as a literary theme that enables them to elicit the highly political, social and subjective stakes illness has in their lives. This thesis shows that the experience of illness and sexual dissidence takes a political value in Spanish life-writing, serving as a tool for critiquing systemic inequalities and galvanising queer agency.