Sexuality Degree Zero:

Abstract

"Sexuality Degree Zero" explores common themes and formal strategies in the fiction of three prominent gay Chicano writers: John Rechy, Arturo Islas, and Michael Nava. Employing the concept of a politicized textual "pleasure" as theorized by French critic Roland Barthes, the study argues for the political efficacy of aesthetic choices characteristic to the three authors. Analyses of Rechy's use of pornography, of Islas' transgressive use of cultural iconography, and of Nava's use of sexual "perversions" in the context of classic crime fiction, all go to demonstrate the various uses of pleasure in the construction of a doubly marginalized but defiant self and voice in fiction by gay Chicano men.