Queering Gender Through Texture: Possession and Decadence in Mário de Sá- Carneiro's A confissão de Lúcio

Abstract

Departing from Renu Bora’s notion of the queerness of textures, this article seeks to understand how locating the queer textures of Mario de Sa-Carneiro’s 1914 novella, A confissao de Lucio , emphasizes the work’s engagement with questions of gender, modernity, and decadence. Sa-Carneiro’s take on modernity has been described as decadent partly because of his refusal or failure to resolve issues of artistic representation with respect to modernity. Approaching A confissao through the queerness of tactility offers a unique insight into the peculiar relationship between the novella’s narrator-protagonist, Lucio Vaz, his friend Ricardo de Loureiro, and Ricardo’s wife Marta. Through an exploration of Ricardo’s framing of relationships in terms of gendered possession, this article examines Sa-Carneiro’s ultimately fraught and decadent figuration of modernity.