Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2020

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

Latin American, Iberian and Latino Cultures

Advisor

Carlos Riobó

Committee Members

Paul Julian Smith

Magdalena Perkowska

Subject Categories

Caribbean Languages and Societies | Latin American Languages and Societies | Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies | Visual Studies

Keywords

Queer, Trans, Sexuality, Baroque, Latin America

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which queer and trans people have been understood through verbal and visual baroque forms of representation in the social and cultural imaginary of Latin America, despite the various structural forces that have attempted to make them invisible and exclude them from the national narrative. My dissertation analyzes the differences between Severo Sarduy’s Neobaroque, Néstor Perlongher’s Neobarroso, and Pedro Lemebel’s Neobarrocho, while exploring their individual limitations and potentialities for voicing the joys and pains of being queer and trans in an exclusionary society. As I analyze the literary works of each artist, I also explore non-traditional forms of literature and non-literary objects found in their individual oeuvres. In doing so, I examine various forms of bodily sovereignty, representation practices, embodied forms of resistance, and dynamic forms of queer and trans living and survival. My investigations provide evidence that, in spite of dictatorial and neoliberal systems of power, spaces of creativity and exploration emerge through which artists reject imposed ideologies, embrace resistant aesthetics, and exercise political innovation. By recovering the Baroque, these artists denounce heteronormativity, phallocentrism, and normative sexualities while recognizing the place of sexual and gender minorities in Latin American culture and politics.

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