Este trabajo examina la manera en que durante momentos de transición política se establece un proceso de desestabilización de las relaciones de género y de la condición femenina por parte de voces marginalizadas. Específicamente, esta disertación tiene como objetivo percibir el modo en que durante períodos de transición política se crea un ambiente propicio para polemizar y resistir de manera crítica las relaciones de poder, problematización que ocasiona la abertura de un espacio de negociación de los discursos que limitan la identidad de género. Dicho proceso de negociación es entendido por medio de un renovado performance de género establecido por ciertas mujeres, performance que incluye tanto su producción literaria como la reconstrucción de lo femenino a través de sus propias experiencias como mujeres y de sus cuerpos. Para realizar este análisis se estudian los casos particulares de Puerto Rico y Brasil a finales del siglo XIX y comienzos del siglo XX a través de las figuras de Luisa Capetillo (1879-1922) y de Patrícia Galvão (1910-1962). Por un lado, se examinan algunos de los ensayos publicados por Luisa Capetillo en sus libros Ensayos libertarios (1907), Mi opinión sobre las libertades, derechos y deberes de la mujer (1911) e Influencias de las ideas modernas (1916). Por otro lado, se analizan algunas de las crónicas publicadas por Patrícia Galvão en su columna "A mulher do povo" (1931) las cuales aparecen en el periódico panfletario O homem do povo. Para identificar el proceso paulatino de desestabilización y reconstrucción visual de lo femenino como parte de la negociación de género que ambas mujeres entablan, en el presente trabajo se observan algunas fotografías que tienen tanto a Luisa Capetillo como a Patrícia Galvão como protagonistas. Por tanto, este trabajo se apoya en las teorías desarrolladas por teóricos como Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Richard Schechner e Irit Rogoff de manera que podamos entender el modo en que los dicursos hegémonicos intentan estructurar la categoría identitaria de género a través de dispositivos de poder, e igualmente, la forma en que esos discursos pueden llegar a ser transgredidos por medio del fenómeno de performance.

Esta trabajo de investigación tiene como origen la identificación dentro de las letras contemporáneas españolas de una serie de obras que comparten dentro de su temática central el extravío existencial del sujeto contemporáneo. Los textos aquí analizados de Cristina Fernández Cubas, Enrique Vila-Matas y Pablo dOrs toman como punto de partida la representación de la odisea trágica de nuestra época. La falta de fundamento sobre el que erigir cualquier sentido de totalidad, la experiencia del abismo al que se ve arrojado el sujeto contemporáneo tras el radical ataque al edificio de la metafísica, la amenaza del nihilismo, la pérdida del asombro en cuanto respuesta originaria ante el misterio de la existencia, así como la dificultad de encontrar un hogar desde el que construir una identidad estable, pasan a ser asuntos fundamentales en estas obras. Por su compromiso con estas cuestiones, he recurrido asiduamente a los desarrollos teóricos del pensador Eugenio Trías, destacando por su inestimable contribución a mi planteamiento: su distinción entre cultura dramática y cultura trágica, su topología de cercos, sus desarrollos en torno a la noción de límite, así como sus premisas sobre la condición trágico-fronteriza del ser humano. Si la condición trágica de desarraigo del individuo contemporáneo supone el germen de mi análisis, vislumbrar a través de la lectura de estos textos una alternativa a la cosmovisión nihilista de la posmodernidad constituye su principal meta. Estos narradores, cada uno dentro de las particularidades de sus universos estéticos, no se detienen en la mera plasmación de la condición trágica y responden a la situación contemporánea resistiéndose a caer en el sinsentido al que aparece abocar el relativismo y nihilismo de la posmodernidad.

Media is used to shape the identity of a nation. It serves as a vehicle to reassure and reaffirm the dominant group's perspective and ideals in order to maintain the status quo. The media has its greatest influence on people who do not have a frame of reference to help them interpret what they see. People who have not had direct contact with the subject being presented may believe that what they are viewing is an accurate depiction. Latinos are often misrepresented on television and film and are a minority faced with constant character distortion. The stereotyping of Latinos has changed very little since the 1970's when it was first called to the attention of the United States House and Senate. This is due in part to the nation's media outlets, which are still the main visual vehicles that perpetuate these stereotypes. This dissertation examines mediated representations of Latinos and the United States-Mexico Border in films, produced in Hollywood and Mexico City, as well as U.S. network newscasts.

This dissertation offers a new approach to the 20th century Latin American prose writers Macedonio Fernández (Argentina, 1874-1952), Felisberto Hernández (Uruguay, 1902-1964), and Clarice Lispector (Brazil, 1920-1977). My approach is based on the study of affect, understood as an examination of the textual representation of mental and emotional states. An affect-oriented perspective reveals that these authors represent a unique reaction to the avant-garde cultural movements of early 20th century Latin America, one that is manifested in the image of the artist that they present in their work. The Latin American avant-gardes portrayed artists as privileged individuals privy to vivid, extreme sensations and perceptions, whereas, in the work of Fernández, Hernández, and Lispector, the artists feelings are unfocused and his or her perceptive powers are dulled. This creates an image of a decentered artist who is mired in ambivalencea vague, uneasy affective state that is expressed most notably in the inattentiveness with which the artist approaches the creative process. This phenomenona combination of both affective and attentional decenteringmarks a critical moment in the development of the figure of the artist in Latin American literature, moving away from the heroic artist portrayed by the avant-garde (inherited from romanticism and Spanish American modernismo) and anticipating the "death of the author" so prevalent in the Latin American "Boom."

Due to the cultural and political influences of the Cuban Revolution, the Boom literary movement, and poststructuralism, autobiography has received little attention in Latin American literature. This dissertation argues that self-writing has followed a distinct trajectory in Latin America, evolving away from traditional understandings of the genre towards a more complicated relationship between the self and the state. Furthermore, the discursive practices of surveyance, surveillance, and torture that characterize authoritarian governments have impacted the autobiographical form as we know it, resulting in metafictional, hypersexual, and linguistically chaotic texts. Stating the Self takes as case studies self-writings by Reinaldo Arenas (Cuba, 1943-1990), Clarice Lispector (Brazil, 1920-1977), and Diamela Eltit (Chile, 1949-), redefining, with the help of poststructuralist and postmodern theories, self-writing in the Latin American context. In the face of authoritarianism, these authors exhibit a struggle over subjectivity and linguistic sovereignty, as well as crisis of representation stemming from trauma, repression, and censorship. These theoretically innovative approaches to self-writing can ultimately be read as speech acts, that is, verbal assertions of the self in the wake of state repression.

In the Spanish Caribbean and its diaspora, the cultural consequences of not belonging predominate works by Cuban authors Zoé Valdés and Oscar Hijuelos, Dominican authors Junot Díaz and Loida Maritza Pérez, and Puerto Rican authors Rosario Ferré and Luis Rafael Sánchez. In Valdéss La nada cotidiana (1995) and Hijueloss Dark Dude (2008) and Beautiful María of My Soul: Or the True Story of María Cifuentes y García, the Lady Behind a Famous Song (2010), the contentious relationship between the United States and Cuba exposes familial divides that were present even before the Cuban Revolution. Dominican American works Drown (1996) and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: A Novel (2007) by Díaz and Geographies of Home (1999) by Pérez address the lasting, violent legacy of the trujillato. In Sánchezs La guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976) and Ferrés The House on the Lagoon (1995), Puerto Ricos linguistic and political marginality combine to reveal the islands political status as a root cause of its stagnation. Each text demonstrates the repercussions of exile from long-term dictatorial rule and U.S. neo-colonial policies. In each case, a definitive national trauma exposes and is exposed by family trauma, demonstrating how the political becomes personal and vice versa. These works blend different geographic, linguistic, racial, and cultural spaces into the same text that provides and expanded definition of Latino literature that includes works published in English and Spanish, both in the United States and elsewhere.

1492 is an important date in world history because it is the year that changed the fate of the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula. Following the Edict of Expulsion imposed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism sought refuge in diverse countries of Europe and North Africa, leaving behind their homeland in order to preserve their Jewish faith and cultural heritage. Those expelled Jews were called Sephardic Jews. Another group, those who could not leave behind their memories, remained in Spain, changing their faith and thus becoming conversos (converts). Caras de España y de la Diáspora sefardita explores the life of the Spanish Jews in socio-cultural, literary, and historical contexts before and after their expulsion, in Spain and in the Sephardic Diaspora. I argue that conversos and the Sephardic Jews in the Diaspora were part of completely opposite realities and social perceptions. Converts continued to be part of the anti-Semitic perceptions that originated during the medieval era and escalated in the fourteenth century and after. On the other hand, Sephardic Jews, away from social prejudices, often expressed themselves freely in cultural and literary environments. This dissertation studies these two realities in complete juxtaposition from different perspectives (i.e., faces, or caras): perception of the conversos in Spanish society, Sephardic Jews in Ottoman lands, and the conversos within Spain. I reconsider literature as the reflection of social perceptions and personal opinions. To offer a better portrait of this tragic and historical event, I refer to various texts of Spanish and Sephardic literature: La vara de Yehudah (Selomoh ibn Verga), Crónica de los Reyes otomanos (Moses ben Baruch Almosnino), El viaje de Turquía (Cristóbal de Villalón), Las paces de los reyes y judía de Toledo, El niño inocente de la Guardía (Lope de Vega), and El Diablo cojuelo (Luis Vélez de Guevara).

This dissertation explores a trend in twenty-first century works by a diverse group of young Latin American and Spanish writers and filmmakers who, regardless of their country of origin and national identity, seem moved by a common motive. They show a keen interest in revisitingâand subvertingâthe Bildungsroman genre in their depiction of young (anti)heroes who embark on diverse types of journeys in search of meaning and self-realization, which nevertheless result in a feeling of homelessness and alienation. I focus on both the continuities and the ruptures between the traditional European Bildungsroman model, along with some of its versions written in Hispanic regions in the twentieth century, and coming of age tales of the twenty-first century. Issues of identity, self-formation, knowledge, consciousness, and the possibility to reach full maturity were at the aesthetic core of the canonical model, while the more recent Hispanic fictions reflect on the major shift in the postmodern period that puts all of those issues into question, and points to the futility of any identity quest in an increasingly globalized world. Why would artists be interested in reviving a genre that seems no longer relevant? While it is not surprising that these characters will encounter serious difficulties as they attempt to accomplish integration, postmodern skepticism does not go unchallenged in these works. I argue that, far from fostering permanent hopelessness, adversity compels these characters to envision alternative ways to find a meaningful place in the world. These include cultivating personal and community relationships and attempting to rescue lost connections with the past, as alternatives to a collapsing neoliberal global model, which has proven to fail human expectations. I undertake a comparative approach across the examined works, and the links among them lead me to reflect on the role of the Bildungsroman today, in terms of what it might reveal about twenty-first century artists, their views on their societies, and their unparalleled takes on identity, self-knowledge, and belonging. Ultimately, the dissertation offers a reflection on what the postmodern coming of age fictions are telling us about the state of literature and film as art in a globalized, commoditized world.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 245-258). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.