Melhuus, M. & Kristi Ann Stølen. Machos, Mistresses, Madonnas. Contesting the Power of Latin American Gender Imagery. London: Verso, 1996.

Este volumen es una recopilación de estudios de casos hechos por antropólogos en Argentina, México, Peru, Ecuador, República Dominicana y presentados en una conferencia en Suecia sobre el poder de los imaginarios de género en LA. Aspectos en común entre estos artículos: influencia de Bourdieu y Foucault, esfuerzo por complejizar de las relaciones de poder de género más allá de las categorías de opresor vs. víctima, uso de la nociones de discurso, imaginarios, hegemonía para explicar y comprender las relaciones de género y de raza.

A partir de esta lectura, se desprenden algunas ideas importantes:

a) Los discursos y representaciones sobre las diferencias de género sirven para articular diferencias de clase y etnia, por ejemplo, la representación de la sexualidad femenina (mujer decente vs fácil) sirve para vehiculizar diferencias de clase y raza en las que grupos dominantes construyen a grupos subordinados como moralmente inferiores y así legitiman y naturalizan relaciones de poder explotadoras.

b) A su vez, discursos y metáforas de género sirven para articular discursos nacionalistas. El lenguaje de género provee una serie de analogías que se mobilizan para construir discursos de identidad nacional. Es más, el lenguaje de género se utiliza para articular nociones de legitimidad política.

c) No se puede hablar de UN discurso dominante ni de UN discurso alternativo unitario y coherente, sino más bien de que ciertos elementos discursivos son mobilizados en diferentes momentos/contextos en función de ciertos objetivos por determinados grupos.

d) Identidades de género son construidas relacionalmente, contextuales, performativas, ambivalentes y contradictorias.

e) Los grupos subordinados si bien no tienen una agencia que les permita articular libremente un discurso alternativo, son capaces de reapropiar, acomodar y negociar significados e imaginarios de género para alcanzar sus propios objetivos, aunque esto no significa que con esto logren revertir los efectos de poder o cuestionar representaciones dominantes; frecuentemente, estos procesos reafirman nociones hegemónicas de género.

f) En LA, es posible identificar una gran narrativa de género asociada a la ideología del mestizaje, donde lo femenino se analoga con lo retrógrado, lo tradicional y lo masculino con el progreso, lo moderno. La metáfora es la mujer indígena violada por el conquistador, cuya prole serían los mestizos.

Comments

  1. JonSeptember 8, 2009 at 12:29 PM

    "No se puede hablar de UN discurso dominante ni de UN discurso alternativo unitario y coherente"

    I note, however, that your research proposal seems to suggest that there is, in Chile at least, a single dominant discourse. I wonder how you would complicate that.

    And regarding the last point here, it's worth noting again that the ideology of mestizaje is really not particularly strong in Chile. I wonder about the implications of that for gender discourse.

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  2. Manuela Valle-CastroSeptember 11, 2009 at 2:54 PM

    Yes, the picture needs to be presented as way more complicated than just one single dominant discourse on gender and sexuality that emerges from one actor (whether we point at “the elites”, “the conservative sectors”, or “the right-wing”). Following Foucault's notion of discourse we can rather identify “effects” of hegemonic discourse from disparate, scattered, overlapping discursive elements. All discourses then are incomplete, have fissures and contain contradictions. Along with this, it is kind of tricky to assign a transparent and linear relationship between the explicit interests of one particular actor and the discourses they articulate/participate in. I would say that in whatever discursive field, we can always identify both the hegemonic effects of certain discourses, and also competing discursive elements that articulate effects of resistance.

    Regarding the ideology of mestizaje, I am not so sure that mestizaje is not so important in Chilean narratives of nationhood...again, maybe in the different way than in other countries in Latin America, we do not have a Malinche for sure. However, in terms of gender ideologies and discourses, I am willing to suggest that historically, a model of “white femininity” has been raised as the normative and desired model for women and that certain official narratives of nationhood tend to reproduce the feminization and demasculation of the racialized other of the nation.

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