On the Verge of Light

Las mil y una as an Archive shaping the Gaze

Abstract

The article proposes to work with the film Las mil y una (Navas, 2020, Argentina) and the notion of the verge of light, to reflect on the notion of the archive and its temporality, affections and dissident sexuality. It undertakes Ann Cvetkovich's proposal to return to queer trauma to analyze the diversity of collective responses that can be generated, condensed into a possible archive of feelings. Following Natalia Taccetta, I review the implications of an archive of sexual-affective circulations and its intimate relationship with temporality, with Elizabeth Freeman's notion of chrononormativity. Taccetta points out that cinema allows to make the past not only knowable but also perceptible: Las mil y una is part of the archive of our reflections on identity, the temporalities in which we coexist and the affective economies that these (dis)enable. In tension with contemporary times, its title refers both to the classic story of Scheherazade and to the colloquial expression of a chain of unfortunate events, while recovering the name of Corrientes’ neighborhood that inspires and places the film. The characters invite to a parcours of queer orientations, not heteronormative but neither classified as other identities. In a sexual-affective scenario far from apps and their taxonomies, the film opens the way to the unresolved tensions between search and hiding, the promise and the threat that coexist in the verge of light.