“OUT OF PLACE AND TIME”: THE QUEER TIME AND SPACE OF MILTON HATOUM’S THE BROTHERS

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Introduction
Throughout history, human beings have fostered a relationship with time which has generally been a highly complex and pretty political one.Accordingly, for many years Western civilisation has given shape to a developmental structure, whose designed path has preconditioned time to pass in a singular manner for every globalised country-implying that time must behave according to human desire.Johannes Fabien (1983, p. 9) poses that: "time, much like language or money, is a carrier of significance: a form through which we define the content of relations between the Self and the Other.
Moreover, […] time may give form to relations of power and inequality under the conditions of capitalist industrial production".
Bearing that in mind, the debate here concerns the unilateral manner through which the contemporary notion of growth, development, improvement and, ultimately, progress is generally and unconsciously temporally associated with the obliteration, modulation and/or institutionalisation of those peoples and regions that do not fit in a steadfast system that does not hail inopportune deviations.Having that taken into account, one's questions to be asked are: Is the Amazon really ready to be integrated to such a system?Is it desirable?Is the Amazonian space depicted by Hatoum in the midst of Imperial illogicalities or is it completely "out of place and time" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 44)?
The theoretical frame for the contextualisation to be effectively constructed and for us to rethink the temporalisation and otherisation of the marginalised Amazonian peoples is composed chiefly by material concerning queer theory insofar as queer perspectives "enact the possibility of disentangling bodies and acts from pre-assigned meanings […] anew from the recycled scraps of dominant cultures" (RODRÍGUEZ, 2010, p. 338).Juana María Rodríguez (2010) articulates an astute critique demonstrating how the future of queer marginalised peoples has no chance of becoming the present of hegemony.What the author implies is that directing nonnormative behaviours and standpoints to a hegemonic pattern and wishing that those who have

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been marginalised by the system become ultimately embraced by it is inadequate.Her argument is that this is so because, in the contemporary world, for those who are not part of a select few "any sense of the future is tied discursively to a moment of current sacrifice, a perpetual spiral that spins us back to a present moment of further repression, discipline, and control" (RODRÍGUEZ, 2010, p. 331).
Correspondingly, and for Nael's insightful observations during the development of the novel to be successfully analysed by this study, the main axioms of queer studies that I'll be relying on concern the idea of queer time and space provided in Furthermore, in order to discuss the hybrid and postmodern condition of both Nael and Omar, Santiago Colás' panorama in Postmodernity in Latin America shall be disclosed; the author problematises far-reaching generalisations and universalisms that scaffold geopolitical binarisms concerning the globalised picture of postmodernity.Colás (1994) criticises the Imperial tradition of a hegemonic discourse that defines and naturalises how the postmodernity is and should function in Latin America, he emphasises the importance for Latin America itself to be seen as a source of existential structures concerning such a matter and for Latin American individuals to "renounce the discourse of the universal and its implicit assumption of a privileged point of access to 'the truth,' which can be reached only by a limited number of subjects" (COLÁS, 1994, p. 172).
Likewise, as to make out how the postmodern condition of Latin America and the queer standpoints of Omar become entangled in the experience of the postcolonial lines separating, for instance, the modern from the postmodern, the colonial from the postcolonial, the superior from the inferior, and, alarmingly, the "goodies" from the "baddies"; According to Hall (1996, p. 244) such a process no longer works, "these 'lines' may have been simple once (were they?) but they certainly are so no longer".This is because if the postcolonial Latin America is still doomed to exist in its colonial spatial and temporal constructed condition, the queer temporality and spatiality, present in Hatoum's novel, cannot be detached from its colonial, neocolonial and postcolonial reality.Similarly, the queer time and space subversion proposed by the postcolonial subject represented mainly by Omar's development cannot be discussed undialogically, that is, if not as intermingled identitarian frames for this character's construction since "it is both the paradigm and the chronological moment of the colonial which the postcolonial claims to be superseding" (HALL, 1996, p. 253).

Discussion
Hatoum's narrative is here scrutinised mainly through the observations of Nael, a narrator who realises the great differences between the twins who foreground the story.While Yaqub is in the process of "becoming more refined", since he grows up personifying "everything that was modern" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 53), Omar does not really care about becoming more educated or civilised, he does not yearn for the "changes" that Yaqub so eagerly expects.When he warns his mother that: "everything's changing in Manaus'" she responds 'That's true… only you hasn't changed, Omar" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 222).In a way Omar's obstinateness and unyielding reaction to the modern and postmodern foxy mirages devised by Imperialism will be pivotal for him not to succumb to a future that never comes; a meaningless hope that deceives those who surround him but is unable to prevent his attitudes and positioning from historicising not only the possibility of existing in the future and in the past but, more importantly, in a meaningful and evocative present.
In fact, and just like he does, it is by acknowledging the present that one might be able to dream about a winsome but reasonable future.Judith Halberstam (2005, p. 6) argues that "[a] 'queer' adjustment in the way in which we think about time, in fact, requires and produces new conceptions of space.normative, and his intense attachment to Amazonian "past" and lack of belongingness to the structured temporal inevitability of Amazonian "future" allows us to scrutinise the conflicting nature of Amazonian "present".
Moreover, Halberstam explains that together with the concept of "queer time" there is the "queer space" which "refers to the place-making practices within postmodernism in which queer people engage and it also describes the new understandings of space enabled by the production of queer counterpublics" (HALBERSTAM, 2005, p. 6).However, notwithstanding the transitory nature of postmodernism per se, Latin American regions' engagement as acknowledged, noted and/or acclaimed participants might be disabled by hegemonic tradition.This point is raised by Colás (1994) when he argues that "since we cannot recall the past out of which our present was shaped, we lose our sense of the present as changeable.We therefore weaken our capacity to formulate projects for new futures.We are left immobile as political subjects" (COLÁS, 1994, p. 6).
Throughout the analysis of the novel it is easy to notice that most characters in Hatoum's novel-whose greatest will is to categorise Omar within the temporal and spatial frame offered by normativity-are, indeed, immobile; they have accepted to regard their temporal and spatial interactions the way they are normatively supposed to; in their view, anything or person that goes against such an order must be reinserted in the system.Notwithstanding the fact that Nael's view over this matter slowly changes during the novel-since he becomes gradually able to question others' and his own beliefs-, in specific parts of the narrative the reader can easily notice that the narrator is not devoid of this bias whatsoever; on the contrary, he clearly and naively endorses production".That is, the postmodern condition of the Amazon, of this piece of Latin America, allows Omar to "misbehave" in what concerns normativity; and the fact that he dares to submit himself to brand-new life habits, if one compares to hegemonic ones, problematises the Imperial view that existence can only follow a unified unilateral path.
In this sense if one thinks of postmodernism not operating in mighty, colonial, and developed countries but specifically in Latin America Colás highlights the controversial fact that its main drawbacks end up triggering what he sees as its main assets: "The Third World returns from its annihilation, paradoxically, to serve as the cultural source for historical rethinking" (COLÁS, 1994, p. 7).
Therefore, from this initial analysis we can already suggest that Omar does not deal with time and space as the Imperial tradition thinks he should, as it would be "normal" for one in his position.Regarding this abnormal characterisation of Omar, perhaps we could say he fits in no time and space if not in a queer one since, according to Judith Halberstam (2005, p. 1), "queer uses of time and space develop, at least in part, in opposition to the institutions of family, heterosexuality, and reproduction.They also develop according to other logics of location, movement, and identification".Omar spatial and temporal bonds seem to be not with the future but with that time and space which surrounds him.Halberstam (2005, p. 2) argues that: "The constantly diminishing future creates a new emphasis on the here, the present, the now, and while the threat of no future hovers overhead like a storm cloud, the urgency of being also expands the potential of the moment and […] squeezes new possibilities out of the time at hand".
For this "constantly diminishing future", to which the Amazon is gradually sentenced, to be successfully canvassed it is vital to understand how queer perspectives, responsible for exposing the temporal and spatial configuration of those whose sexual identities are non-normative, and postcolonial ones, which has discussed those whose racial and socio-economic temporalities are nonnormative, can and should be seen here as thoroughly and deeply interconnected.The hypothesis here is that, due to the parallels that might be profitably drawn, the postcolonial site is also one of queer temporality.One of these chiefly parallels is the fact that, just like it happens when one thinks about the already discussed queer time and space of the Amazon and Amazonians, "the postcolonial […] value lies precisely in its refusal of this 'here ' and 'there', 'then' and 'now', 'home' and 'abroad' perspective" (HALL, 1996, p. 247).Refusing this "home and abroad" perspective, if one takes into account Omar's queer behaviour concerning the modernisation of Manaus, Domingas' spaceless and timeless existence as half savage and half civilised in the postmodern Amazon, Halim's unnerving inaptitude to fit his values in a world where such values have become disposable, Rânia's attempts to evade the advent of an even more male chauvinistdespite so-called neoliberal-culture, and Nael's shifting observations regarding the confusing atmosphere that surrounds him, it becomes clear through these characters' institutionalisation and silencing that they have been paradoxically enslaved by modernity in the postcolonial moment.
Hall still argues that "in this postcolonial moment, the transverse, transnational, transcultural movements, which were always inscribed in the history of colonisation, but carefully overwritten by more binary forms of narrativisation, have, of course, emerged in new forms to disrupt the settled relations of domination and resistance inscribed in other ways of living" (HALL, 1996, p. 251).Omar, in this sense, seems to be the one who emerges in The Brothers as the postcolonial subject who most draws the attention not only of other characters but also of the reader due to his excessively uncommon "ways of living".The study, thence, draws an analogy between the differing but interrelated ways in which the stability of the hegemonic system is threatened by the postcolonial subject represented by Omar through his queer perspectives and behaviours.
At the same time his brother Yaqub grows up hopeful about the opportunities brought by Western notions of progress, development, and improvement; he ignorantly and uncritically understands his condition as one of a savage struggling to be civilised and educated in order to fit into the pattern, and to think about the Amazon as a brute uncultured land running out of time to become the metropolis it should be: "Halim was complaining that the city was flooded, […] 'Those plots are asking to be occupied,' Yaqub smiled.'Manaus is ripe for growth'" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 194).Yaqub is infatuated with the idea of progress, he does not look around, he does not see what Nael lives of the Amazonians observed by Nael since, as Galeano has put it, "industry lands as an airplane does, without affecting the airport" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 211).
We are taught to believe that "the airport" needs this proven ineffective "plane", that underdeveloped countries are in the past of developing ones which, in their turn, are in the past of developed ones; we learn that indigenous peoples are savage and that nature represents a pristine world because we must also learn that they are nothing more than the initial phase of a progressive process: "The posited authenticity of a past (savage, tribal, peasant) serves to denounce an inauthentic present (the uprooted, évolués, acculturated)" (FABIAN, 1983, p. 10).However, what Western tradition does not inform us is that in this "knowledge of Time" the future of some is not the same future of others.According to Rodríguez (2010, p. 333) "Futurity has never been given to queers of color, children of color, or other marginalized communities that live under the violence of state and social erasure".This is exactly what Nael perceives as he walks through the streets of Manaus, questioning if this "development" is really something desirable for the Amazon.
This shift in Nael's perspective happens especially when Yaqub returns to Manaus for a visit after spending many years in Sao Paulo: "Yaqub's visit, though it was only short, let me get to know him a little […].
[H]e left a mixed impression on me, of someone hard, resolute and proud, but marked, at the same time, by an eagerness that was like a kind of affection.This uncertainty left me confused" (HATOUM, 2002, pp. 107-108).Nael considers the possibility that perhaps he has been biased when he chose Yaqub as the one to admire and Omar as the one to dismiss, and he is able to transcend normativity thereof.In this postcolonial moment, the transverse, transnational, transcultural movements, which were always inscribed in the history of colonisation, but carefully overwritten by more binary forms of narrativisation, have, of course, emerged; and, according to Hall, they have "emerged in new forms to disrupt the settled relations of domination and resistance inscribed in other ways of living" (HALL, 1996, p. 251).
Like Omar, the postcolonial subject represented by the narrator and clearly described by Hall seems to occupy, moreover, a queer position.One might find it difficult to build a concrete bridge between postcolonialism and queer theory, but, just like Hall emphasises the necessity of thinking about the postcolonial subject not as narrowly related to a specific geopolitical and racial frame, Rodríguez avers that queer Separating groups, "victimising" and "protecting" them, hinders their autonomy and makes them weaker and much easier to be handled, putting them together is what hegemony is afraid of since representing such a select group of privileged subjects it would lose its mighty status.In the end if the hegemonic tradition does not represent the majority, only Interdisciplinarity is able to expose this hypothesis which I dare to say is a pretty obvious fact.The confusing situation in which the narrator finds himself is pretty similar to the one faced by every other marginalised subject: the Imperial system has obliterated the possibility of deviating behaviours, and those who disagree with what they were supposed to be giving their backing to eventually find themselves in a blind alley.
It is exactly because they do not fit in the system that both the narrator and Omar see its flaws.Ultimately believing that the only way to keep on moving is the one that "worked" for developed countries seems to be an Imperial imposition that is mistakenly taken as our only choice.Reaching the climax of the novel, the narrator realises that the idea of future is a lie, and that all those values that he admired for so long in Yaqub's personality were just part of a façade that masks the ideology of expansionist development.He gives up his dreams about a better future: He [Yaqub] asked if I needed anything, and when was I going to visit him in São Paulo?I put the visit off for more than twenty years.I had no urge to see the sea.I had already thrown away the sheets with Yaqub's architectural plans that Omar had ripped up in his fury.I was never interested in structural designs with their reinforced concrete, or in the maths' books Yaqub had so proudly given me.I wanted to keep my distance from all those calculations, from the engineering and the progress Yaqub aspired to.In his last letters all he talked about was the future, and even demanded to know my opinionthe future, that never-ending fallacy (HATOUM, 2002, p. 263).
Caboclos as Nael are not part of Brazilian future filled with "calculations" and with "the progress Yaqub aspired to"; they are only a curiosity related to its savage past.disappear from the store are the symbols of a past that is also gradually being literally disposed of, in order to receive modernisation one must get rid of those things that, no matter how important or valuable they might be, do not fit in this new era.In one of her working days Nael decides to help her: "She got rid of all her father's old junk, even throwing things from the previous century into the bin, like the miniature hookah that had belonged to Halim's uncle.It didn't bother her throwing all these things out.She operated with a fierce determination, quite aware she was burying a past" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 205).Deciding that the Amazon is only meaningful if adapted to our "future", one is also "burying a past", but, more importantly, turning a blind eye to what our present is trying to show us.

Conclusion
As a final remark for the analysis one could, thus, conclude that the Amazon has proven to be an emblematic locus of the hegemonic discourses and the master narrative of modernity against which it is described as a land which has been lost in time and isolated in its space; what this normative discourses suggest is that if "development" reached those lands things would improve for their "abandoned" populations.Is that so?
In the opinion of Galeano (1997, p. 249-250) "The growing relative backwardness of the great hinterlands, submerged in poverty, is not, as some maintain, due to their isolation, but on the contrary to their direct or indirect exploitation".Studies endorse what Galeano poses: poverty, as I have already suggested, is a necessary means for richness to exist.
As stated by Halberstam (2005, p. 7): "[T]o all different kinds of temporality we assign value and meaning […] according to the logic of capital accumulation, but those who benefit from capitalism in particular experience this logic as inevitable".The temporal condition of Hatoum's characters, hence, can be understood to be neither distinct nor inevitable, even though normativity poses that they belong to different temporal spheres, when going to the US and becoming inserted in "the future" Omar shows the readers that one can travel through the gaps of time and space, belonging to the past, the present, and the future and to none at the same time.
Ultimately, then, we can ponder upon the importance of thinking about the queer spatiality and temporality of the postcolonial subject represented by the forgotten Amazonians brought forward by Hatoum. According to Hall (1996, p. 248) "the […] By articulating and elaborating a concept of queer time, I suggest new ways of understanding the nonnormative behaviours".Omar's behaviours are, indeed, and I shall later pinpoint, far from "Out of Place and Time": The Queer Time and Space of Milton Hatoum' normativity: "He was living in an old motorboat, rented, really cheap […].Could they [Omar and his girlfriend] go through life like this? […] They fished in the deserted branches of the Anavilhanas, laying their net near the boat, […] an amphibious existence, clandestine, […], with no set time for anything.Unfettered and free, their life had no fixed points" (HATOUM, 2002, p. 167).Living, thus, a life "with no fixed points", Omar seems to accept the identitarian fluidity that he shares with the Amazon.Is such a condition positive or negative?It is difficult to think about a right answer for this question unbigotedly.Halberstam (2005,   p. 6)  sees "postmodernism as simultaneously a crisis and an opportunity-a crisis in the stability of form and meaning, and an opportunity to rethink the practice of cultural "Out of Place and Time": The Queer Time and Space of Milton Hatoum' sees-and slowly starts to ponder upon-when he walks through the outskirts of Manaus: "I saw another world in these areas, […] a hidden, secret world, full of people […], some just vegetating, like the packs of squalid dogs prowling under the mud"(HATOUM, 2002, p. 73).Western expansionism is not worried about "improving" the "Out of Place and Time": The Queer Time and Space of Milton Hatoum'

"Out of Place and Time": The Queer Time and Space of Milton Hatoum's the Brothers | Davi Silva Gonçalves ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Nova Revista Amazônica | v. 1 n. 1 | Jan./Jun. 2013 | 91-106 PPG Linguagens e Saberes da Amazônia, Bragança, Pará 99 perspectives
are must not be limited to what regards sex, gender, and/or desire.The categorisation of female, indigenous, disabled, black, gender-queer and many other marginalised subjects as belonging to specific and isolated realms of analysis blur the