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This article shows how queer subjectivities disrupt traditional paternal figures in António Lobo Antunes’ 2001 novel Que farei quando tudo arde? Building on Lee Eldelman’s definition of queer individuals as radically negative, I argue that the protagonist’s transvestite father undermines both the symbolism underpinning the New State’s patriarchal, nationalistic and Catholic values, and the protagonist’s identity as well as his ability to manipulate language. Faced with the impossibility of recording the story of his relationship with his father, the protagonist comes to terms with his father’s marginal position within society and explores different ways of reclaiming his legacy. This is a process that demands that he abandon any effort to understand his father through writing, and that he identify with his father’s radical otherness. This unique form of identification is the only way he has of building a relationship with his father that is beyond any hierarchical system of values and beyond any form of discourse.
