En-Gendering Desire in Aida Santos's Lesbian Poetry

• Main Author: Mariano, Danicar
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: deconstruction; Lacan; lesbian feminist criticism
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss7/6; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1107/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n07_2006_5D_203.1_NewScholarsForum_Mariano.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Lesbian feminist literary criticism seeks to deconstruct the essential categories of male and female and their “natural” link to the production of desire, enabling an insightful criticism that formalism and feminism alone cannot fully venture in. Thus, this lesbian feminist literary reading of Aida Santos’s poetry critiques heteropatriarchy in language, desire and gender by questioning the binary assumption operative in them. A binary logic defines women and men by what each are not, highlighting one sex over the other, and presenting them as in need each other. This patriarchal assumption intersects with compulsory heterosexuality to marginalize lesbian existence in the world and in the word. This self-same logic operative in language and discourse naturalizes rape by presenting women actively searching for the desire of men. The poetry of Aida Santos exposes this blunder and presents a version of desire that goes beyond phallocentrism by presenting lesbian existence in the world and in texts.