Gendered Spectacles of Nationalism


Taylor, Diana. Dissapearing Acts. Spectacles of Gender and Nationalism in Argentina's "Dirty War." Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.


Taylor's book is key to my research about militarism and neoliberalism as gendered spectacles, as it does several things at the same time:

1. It outlines a definition of spectacle as a central component of national imaginations. Spectacles offer universal canonical narratives for interpreting specific historical situations, they present a version of the world as inevitable and natural, and they interpellate the audiences in a way that it shapes what are the viable subjectivities in that context. Spectacle, performativity and theatricality are not terms opposed here to "reality," but rather have very real effects. Who is in control of the production of national public spectacles is what matters, who holds the power to manipulate desire and control the gaze.

2. It describes the ways that masculinity is performed in the context of militarism in Argentina's "Dirty War." The Junta enacted an old script of male individuation that is carried out on and through women's bodies. The presence of the female seems to mediate both in an Oedipal drama (in the role of mother) and to guarantee that the homosocial bonding of militarism is framed as an heterosexual. However, Taylor is critical of how the left has been trapped in the same script of disputing the "true" masculinity from the military by feminizing their opponents.

3. It points at the ways that resistance is always constrained in previous already scripted plots that are available in any given specific cultural and sociohistorical context. Emblematic would be the case of the Madres, already commented here. Because women (or "good women" anyway) have available a very limited number of viable roles to play, their oppositional practices tend to end up enacting those roles. This is not a call for paralysis, but rather to acknowledge the complexities and contradictions inherent to oppositional practices. Along with this, she writes about the dilemmas when writing about violence, and calls for a politics of spectatorship: it invites us to a responsible witnessing of violence.

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