Queer in Translation: What the International Success of Pedro Lemebel Means For Chilean Cultural Democratization and Identity Politics

This paper analyzes the international success of Chilean queer writer, Pedro Lemebel. I argue that Lemebel’s success publishing in translation is due in part to that fact that his queer aesthetic appeals to global-north readers. On the one hand, Lemebel’s global success diversifies what is commonly seen as a homogenous corpus of Latin American literary texts in translation; it can also increase the cultural agency and political legitimacy of queer subjectivities in Chile, a deeply patriarchal and homophobic country. On the other hand, perhaps Lemebel’s international success is due to the fact that his work reproduces an all-too familiar image of the marginalized sudaca other and gives global-north readers a false sense of political alliance with this other.