In this chapter I shall focus on Daína Chaviano's novel Casa de juegos. I posit that the use of erotic discourse in this novel serves a foundational purpose as the site of a feminine and feminist space in the context of subaltern voices used to subvert patriarchal values and monolithic discourses of power. I start here by differentiating, like Octavio Paz, between eroticism and sexuality. For Paz, in his book La llama doble: amor y erotismo, ‘En la sexualidad, el placer sirve a la procreación; en los ritos eróticos el placer es un fin en sí mismo o tiene fines distintos a la reproducción’ (1993: 11). He continues: ‘La sexualidad es animal; el erotismo es humano. Es un fenómeno que se manifiesta dentro de una sociedad y que consiste, esencialmente, en desviar o cambiar el impulso sexual reproductor y transformarlo en una representación’ (1993: 106). In this novel, as well as in those analysed in chapters 5 and 6, sexuality is linked to performance, spirituality and a process of self-knowledge. Eroticism plays a central role, where reproduction is not seen as the final aim of sexual intercourse.

Chaviano was well established as an author in Cuba before moving to Miami, and is well known internationally, so it is surprising that there are almost no critical studies of her novel Casa de juegos. Only Anna Chover Lafarga (2006) seems to have devoted a full article to an examination of this novel, wherein she analyses the subversive essence of eroticism. My analysis intends to fill a gap in the research in terms of attention to this text.