COMMON VALENCES

Combinatorial play, subversion and otherness in the works of Péter Esterházy

Abstract

This paper examines gender stereotypes and gender subversions and how otherness is represented in three works by Péter Esterházy. The libretto and prose of Daisy is set in the linguistic space of a transvestite bar, and since its essential component is the radically appropriated quotation, it can be said that the author actually constructs tabloid otherness from domesticity. The dynamics of the mask and performative gestures are as important as the disorientation of the texts’ directions of movement. Esterházy’s text (Seventeen Swans), written under the pseudonym Lili Csokonai, is also far more than a play on fictional female authorship: the work is also permeated by discourses of otherness and identity. The archaic use of language also initiates a dialogue with socio-cultural models of acceptance, inclusion and difference. The homosexually charged interjection in a bizarre scene from Esterházy’s last work, The Pancreatic Cancer Diary, becomes a tragicomic image of the radical narcissism of facing death.