Dans ce travail, l‟objet de notre étude a été la série de romans néo-policiers de l'écrivain Leonardo Padura - le plus grand représentant de ce type de textes à Cuba - dont les oeuvres, tout en conservant les traits qui permettent au lecteur de les reconnaître comme des romans policiers, révèlent une profonde transgression générique à tous les niveaux - modal, thématique et formel. Avec ces textes, Padura est parvenu à démanteler le canon du roman policier révolutionnaire, dont la pratique s‟est perpétuée à Cuba jusqu‟au milieu des années quatre-vingt, subventionnée par le régime révolutionnaire. Nous avons tenté de démontrer que la transformation générique entreprise par cet écrivain sur les modèles traditionnels du roman policier lui permet d'actualiser le genre et de l'utiliser comme instrument pour questionner l'ordre établi d‟un régime qui a prétendu uniformiser une société conçue comme multiple et hétérogène par l'auteur. En même temps, cette transformation lui permet d‟entrer dans la discussion sur la question générique, de revendiquer la nature systématiquement modificatrice des genres littéraires et de polémiquer sur le dogmatisme normatif qui se propose de classifier les genres en compartiments étanches et d‟enfermer le roman policier dans le cadre isolé de la « sous-littérature ». / The aim of our research is to study a series of neo-crime novels by the writer Leonardo Padura - the leading exponent of this genre on the island of Cuba-, whose works, while upholding the traits that enable them to be read as detective stories, feature a profound generic transgression at all levels - modal, thematic and formal. He sought to breathe new life into the genre Ŕwhich had been thoroughly exhausted on the island since the mid 1980sŔ and show that by relieving it of its entire political-ideological burden and treating it from a literary perspective, it could attain high artistic merit. In this way, and as we have set out to show, Padura has managed to revitalize the genre and use it as an instrument for questioning the order established by a regime that has sought to bring uniformity to a society that the author considers to be multiracial and heterogeneous. Furthermore, by transforming the formulas and the narrative structures of the crime novel in his own writings, which include and invert the genre‟s traditional models, Padura has managed to challenge the regulatory dogmatism that seeks to classify genres into watertight compartments and relegate the crime novel to the confines of “sub-literature”.

In the nineteen-eighties a host of female detectives appeared in crime fiction authored by women. Ostensibly these detectives challenged hegemonic norms, but the consensus of opinion was that their appropriation of male values and adherence to conventional generic closures colluded with a gender system of male privilege. Academic interest in the work of female authors featuring male detectives was limited. Yet it can be argued that these texts could have the potential to disrupt the hegemonic order through the introduction, whether deliberately, or inadvertently, of a female counterpoint to the hegemony. The hypothesis I am advancing claims that the reconfiguration of male detectives in works authored by women avoids the visible contradictions of gender and genre that are characteristic of works featuring female detectives. However, through their use of disruptive performatives, these works allow scope for challenging normal gender practices—without damage to the genre. This hypothesis is tested by applying the performative theories of Judith Butler to a close reading of selected crime novels. Influenced by the theories of Austin, Lacan and Althusser, Butler’s concept of performativity claims that hegemonic notions of gender are a fiction. This discussion also uses Wayne Booth’s concept of the implied author as a means of distinguishing the performative agency of the text from that of the characters. Agatha Christie, P.D. James, and Donna Leon, each with their male detective heroes, come from different generations. A Butlerian reading illustrates their potential for disrupting gender norms. Of the three, however, only Donna Leon avoids the return to hegemonic control that is a feature of the genre. Christie’s women who have agency are inevitably eliminated, while conformist women are rewarded. James’s lead female character is never fully at ease in her professional role. When thrust into a leadership she proves herself to be competent, but not ready or desirous of the senior position. Instead her role is to mediate the transition of her junior, a male, to that position. Donna Leon is different. The moral and emotional content of her narratives suggests an implied author committed to ideological change. Her characters simultaneously renounce and collude with illusions of patriarchal authority, and could lay claim to be models for Butler’s notion of performative resistance.