The Language of Transvestism and the Political Limits of the National-Popular in 20th and 21st Century Latin American Cultural Production.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the cultural production of seven contemporary Latin American artists that explicitly foreground non-normative genders and sexualities. It argues that they can be read not only as works about personal identity, but also as constitutive of the horizon of an alternative political language. This language challenges some of the basic claims to legitimacy of the Latin American national-popular project that during the 20th century sought to produce a collective national and ethnic identity through exclusion and expulsion of difference in its quest for political dominance and hegemony. This dissertation explores how these languages reveal the political, cultural, and aesthetic limits of the national-popular in Latin America, and focuses on the way in which image, performance, and narrative employ transvestism as a technique to queer the ideal of a modern collective national and ethnic identity. It combines an analysis of works by renowned writers (Reinaldo Arenas, Senel Paz, Jorge Ronet, José Donoso) and visual and performance artists Giuseppe Campuzano, Héctor Acuña, and Pedro Lemebel. It also draws on theoretical contributions to LGBTQ studies from Anglophone criticism (Judith Butler, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Teresa de Lauretis, David Halperin, Annamarie Jagose, Ben. Sifuentes Jaúregui, Brad Epps) and Latin American criticism (Severo Sarduy, Néstor Perlóngher, Juan Pablo Sutherland), aesthetics and politics (Nelly Richard, Jean Franco, Alberto Moreiras, Gareth Williams), as well as on Latin American historical and critical perspectives.