Hindsight and the Real: Subjectivity in Gay Hispanic Autobiography studies the representations of self and the discursive constitution of identity in the autobiographical works by several (mostly) gay-identified authors in modern Spanish Catalan and Latin American literature. These include among others Reinaldo Arenas s Antes que anochezca (1992) Juan Goytisolo s Coto vedado (1985) and En los reinos de taifa (1986) Jaime Gil de Biedma s Retrato del artista en 1956 (1994) and Salvador Dalí s Un diari: 1919-1920 (1994). The book contains a series of case studies linked to a recurring central argument. Drawing on a wide range of contemporary critics and philosophers (including among others Slavoj Zizek Ernesto Laclau Homi Bhabha and Emmanuel Lévinas) it proposes a notion of identity and (homo)sexuality which is neither essentialist nor merely positional (discursive). Thus while attempting to show (in post-structuralist fashion) that gay Spanish and Latin American self-representations are retroactive constructs invariably inflected by political and discursive factors such as nationality race and class the book also stresses the role of the Real - the kernel of pre-discursive substance which according to Lacan and his followers both precedes and exceeds the symbolic order.