PEDRO ANTONIO VALDEZ’ CARNAVAL DE SODOMA: TRANSVESTITE PORTRAITS AND VESTMENTS

Cross-dressing and queer identities constitute themes that are ignored and neglected by the literary critic that the novel Carnaval de Sodoma (2002), by Dominican writer Pedro Antonio Valdez has had until now. We will analyze three transvestite characters —Tora, the Baron of the graveyard-La Fortunata and Changsán-Princess of Jade— and examine how the transvestite action destabilize the naturalization and complementarization imaginary that the normative discourse has assigned to the traditional genders (masculine/femenine). We will rethink notions such as gender and sexuality, usually established by the heterocentered thought as fixe and immutable entities.