Hauntological Memory and Gender Performativity in Eduardo Machado's Kissing Fidel (2011).

Kissing Fidel (2011) by Eduardo Machado portrays the contentious relationship between Oscar Marques and his extended family, stemming from his desire to return to Cuba and embrace Fidel Castro in a reconciliatory kiss aimed at harmonizing Cuban American relations. Set in a Miami funeral home after midnight on the fourteenth of August 1994, Kissing Fidel brings to the surface the repressed memories and trauma wrought from the experiences of exile and that influence the familial and interpersonal relationships of the Marques family. This study proposes a reading of Kissing Fidel through the intersecting theories of hauntology and gender performativity to examine the ways in which repression, exile, and trauma influence a dialogic negotiation that works towards the resolution of individual conflicts, secrets, and desires. Our reading further analyzes how gender roles come to be reinforced within the family dynamic and how ideological notions of heteronormativity and masculinity are passed down through generations. In turning to a greater narrative on Cuban American relations and queer liberation, Machado's depiction of these gendered conflicts crafts a queer space wherein fluidity operates as a subversion of heteropatriarchal hegemony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]