ABSTRACT
This chapter revisits a 1937 novel discussed in The Puerto Rican Syndrome (Gherovici, 2003) highlighting aspects of gender, race, and colonial domination touched upon too briefly in the book. The problematics of race are a determining factor not only in the plot but also in the ideological positions represented by the main characters. One year after the novel’s publication, in 1938, Lacan explored the evolution of the Western family predicting a decline in the role of the father. More than 80 years later, is our contemporary situation an aftermath of this decline and is race a symptomatic new marker of difference when social institutions fail to fulfill their function?
