ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the intersection between the flâneur and the cruising homosexual man in texts by Chilean writer Hernán Díaz Arrieta, “Alone.” This analysis is based on a corpus of letters, chronicles, and journal entries, both published and unpublished. At the core of these texts, there are two letters addressed to Galician writer Eduardo Blanco Amor in which Díaz Arrieta chronicles his walks in Madrid during an August 1950 trip, in the context of the Francisco Franco dictatorship. The man at the center of this drift—at times aimless, but ultimately driven by sexual desire and the appreciation of male beauty—displays a kind of genius that exceeds the parameters of Walter Benjamin’s flâneur. This chapter argues that Arrieta’s cruising skills, as well as his ability to veil the sexual nature of his exploits through language, can be framed within the concept of “queer utopia” proposed by José Esteban Muñoz. Díaz Arrieta’s cruising finds ways to satisfy his queer desires in the stifling atmosphere of the postwar Spanish capital, while remaining aware of the limits of his strategies.
