Queer Latinidad



Rodríguez, Juana María. Queer Latinidad. Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces. New York and London: New York University Press, 2003.

Rodríguez emphasizes "place" and "space" as sites for the articulation of identities, and sees place as critical to understand performative practices of identity as situated. Inspired by Foucault's notions of regulatory practices and disciplinary discourses, as well as by Judith Butler's idea of gender as performative, she regards subjectivity more as a product of discursive practices rather than pre-existing them. Also quotes Alarcón's notion of "subject-in-process" to point at the paradoxical and contradictory character of identities. Every particular space contains pre-existing discourses and narratives in which subjectivity is embodied in a —culturally specific— intelligible way; however, there is no discourse of identity that can contain subjectivity, there is always an excess of the subject that resists to be contained within the discursive boundaries of identity. Thus, we move through these different spaces learning sometimes by force to understand their codes, and rules of meaning. [I agree, signifying practices are not an intellectual problem, they can be a matter of life and death if we cannot achieve the parameters of humanity/respectability of a place] Practices of identity can only be read in relation to the context in which they emerge.

In regards to the dynamic construction of meanings around queer latinidad:
Latinidad is already a contradictory term that contains all the paradoxes of the colonial encounter. Yet it can be used to articulate a subject position that is marked by geographical and cultural displacement, occupying the position of a daily translator between cultures and languages. Latinidad has been as well exploited as a stereotype in US productions through images that balance the exotic with the familiar, and through the sexualization of female racialized bodies. Rodríguez suggests a "rhizomatic" reading of the term, tracing the directions that different constructions of Latinidad take. Likewise, she proposes to use "queerness" as a sort of methodology for breaking down categories, play with meanings, and question the very will behind the drive for categorization. Spanish (and Spanglish) with its highly gendered language would provide with plenty of opportunities for queering discourses. Queer latinidad can be seen as an art form, that remains open to reinscription and reinterpretation. (29)

Comments

  1. JonSeptember 8, 2009 at 12:47 PM

    What do you think is the relationship between the idea of an "excess of the subject" and the notion of an excess of the body that is presented by some other theorists. Are these the same? Parallel? Compatible?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Feminisms and women's struggles in LA

Radcliffe, Sarah and Sallie Westwood. “Gender, Racism and the Politics of Identities in Latin America”. “Viva”: women and popular protest in Latin America. Pp. 1-29. London; New York: Routledge, 1993. In this chapter, Radcliffe and Westwood make the following points: 1. Women's gender and political identities and practices have to be understood in their specific contexts, as they are ever shifting and multiple. 2. It is not possible (and also inaccurate and harmful) to talk about a unitary category of Latin American women, as one can speak of LA as a whole region only in conventional terms. If we do not acknowledge the fractures and multiple locations that women in LA, we contribute to silence and render invisible the women who are indeed oppressed by other women, i.e. working class, indigenous and other racialized women. It is also necessary to look beyond the commonplaces and stereotypes that exoticize LA, as this is part of a racist and eurocentric narrative. 3. "Gendered i...
Read more

A house is not always a home.

Stephenson, Marcia. “The Architectural Relationship between Gender, Race, and the Bolivian State”. The Latin American subaltern studies reader edited by Ileana Rodríguez. Durham, NC : Duke University Press, 2001. This article tackles the relationship between narratives of nationhood in Bolivia, race, gender and space. It argues that the idea of Bolivia as a modern nation-state requires to put in place the ideology of mestizo identity (the progressive whitening of the population), the "othering" of indigenous populations, and a gendered and racialized conception of space to domesticate the heterogeneous social body. Taking as a start point the planning and development of rural houses, Stephenson analyzes the ideological implications of their spatial distribution: hegemonic discourses of modernity and citizenship carry gendered distinctions between the inside/domestic and the outside/public, as well as the demand for the acculturation of indigenous communities, who are expected...
Read more