Topologies of desire in What belongs to you, by Garth Greenwell

Abstract

In this article, we aim at constructing a spatial analysis of the novel What belongs to you, by Garth Greenwell. The novel narrates the involvement between an American high school teacher, resident in Sofia, Bulgaria, and a male sex worker named Mitko, who provides his services in public urinals in the Bulgarian capital. Departing from the theoretical assumptions of Dimas (1985), Foucault (2013), Augé (1994), Humphreys (1979) and Espinoza (2019), we intend to demonstrate how the narrator’s perspective is based on what we call a desirous look of cruising, that is, ways of perceiving spatiality, linked to desire and the anonymous enjoyment of male homoeroticism. Through the exegesis of the topologies covered by the protagonist, we come to the conclusion that spatiality, in this novel, can be categorized into two types: smooth spaces, linked to the feelings of guilt and shame experienced by the narrator, and rough spaces, articulated to gay desire permeated with risks, between him and Mitko.