<p> The question at the root of this study is why the political formation of state power in Latin America always seems to be accompanied by violence against women. Two threads run throughout: an analysis of the relation between image, violence, and subject formation; and the application of this theory to the political violence exerted upon feminine subjectivity in relation to state formation in Latin America. I trace the marginalization of women through experimental dictatorial fiction of the Southern Cone up to the crisis of femicide that has emerged alongside the so-called narco-state in Mexico in the wake of NAFTA. I argue that Latin American feminist thought has sought to articulate itself as a post-hegemonic force of interruption from <i> within</i> the dominant order, a project that is problematized in the face of the perverse seriality of the femicide crimes and the intolerable yet enigmatic power of which they become a forced representation.</p><p> The first chapter stages a close reading of Salvador Elizondo&rsquo;s <i> Farabeuf</i> (1965), locating in the novel&rsquo;s engagement with a photograph of the Chinese <i>Leng Tch&rsquo;&eacute;</i> execution a theory of the relation between cut, image, and the female body that understands the subtraction of the feminine as the foundation of the political. The second chapter turns to the structure of dictatorial violence in Argentina, looking at Alejandra Pizarnik&rsquo;s <i>La condesa sangrienta</i> (1965) and Luisa Valenzuela&rsquo;s &ldquo;Cambio de armas&rdquo; (1982) alongside the Argentine Revolution and the Dirty War, respectively. Pizarnik&rsquo;s meditation on Elizabeth Bathory&rsquo;s crimes highlights both the fetishization of the subversive body and the inevitable failure of sovereign power to designate itself. Valenzuela&rsquo;s fragmentary story deconstructs the notion of erasure at the heart of the regime&rsquo;s use of forced disappearance by staging a perverse sexual relation within an environment of domestic confinement. The third chapter examines Diamela Eltit&rsquo;s critique of neoliberalism during the Pinochet regime in Chile through her cinematographic novel <i> Lump&eacute;rica</i> (1983) before following this economic trail northward to the femicide crisis that has ravaged the Mexican-U.S. border since 1993. I demonstrate that both oppressive power structures&mdash;official and unofficial&mdash;are founded on the fusion of economic and gender violence. A reading of Roberto Bola&ntilde;o&rsquo;s <i>2666</i> through the notion of the exquisite corpse situates this urgent crisis in relation to globalization and the postmodern world of images, technology, efficiency, and instantaneity for which it becomes a disturbing emblem.</p>

“Indigenousness and the Reconstruction of the Other in Guatemalan Indigenous Literature” examines the production of a contemporary Indigenous literature in Guatemala. With the aid of a multidisciplinary approach informed by cultural, feminist, gender, socio-anthropological, and postcolonial studies, I analyze the emergence and ongoing struggle of Maya writers in Guatemala to show how the production of an alternate ideology contests official notions of nationhood and promotes a more inclusive space. I argue that Maya writers redefine Indigenous identity by reinstating Indigenous agency and self-determination, and deconstructing and rearticulating ethnicity, class and gender, among other markers of identity. I begin by examining the indio as the basis of colonial and national narratives that logically organize the Guatemalan nation. I then observe the emergence of a contemporary Indigenous literature in Guatemala in the 1970s, a literature that, I argue, isolates and contests the position that was assigned to the indio and proposes a literature written by and for the Indigenous peoples of Guatemala. I posit that the inauguration of a Maya cultural space occurs with Luis de Lión’s novel El tiempo principia en Xibalbá (1985) and Gaspar Pedro González’ La otra cara (1992). I then observe the destabilization of traditional Maya female roles and symbols in the recent work of female Indigenous poets, Calixta Gabriel Xiquín and Maya Cu. Lastly, in the work of Víctor Montejo and Humberto Ak’abal I identify a negotiation of heterogeneity and essentialism for the development of a cultural project that looks to the formation of a pluricultural, plurinational Guatemalan state.

No description available.

“Indigenousness and the Reconstruction of the Other in Guatemalan Indigenous Literature” examines the production of a contemporary Indigenous literature in Guatemala. With the aid of a multidisciplinary approach informed by cultural, feminist, gender, socio-anthropological, and postcolonial studies, I analyze the emergence and ongoing struggle of Maya writers in Guatemala to show how the production of an alternate ideology contests official notions of nationhood and promotes a more inclusive space. I argue that Maya writers redefine Indigenous identity by reinstating Indigenous agency and self-determination, and deconstructing and rearticulating ethnicity, class and gender, among other markers of identity. I begin by examining the indio as the basis of colonial and national narratives that logically organize the Guatemalan nation. I then observe the emergence of a contemporary Indigenous literature in Guatemala in the 1970s, a literature that, I argue, isolates and contests the position that was assigned to the indio and proposes a literature written by and for the Indigenous peoples of Guatemala. I posit that the inauguration of a Maya cultural space occurs with Luis de Lión’s novel El tiempo principia en Xibalbá (1985) and Gaspar Pedro González’ La otra cara (1992). I then observe the destabilization of traditional Maya female roles and symbols in the recent work of female Indigenous poets, Calixta Gabriel Xiquín and Maya Cu. Lastly, in the work of Víctor Montejo and Humberto Ak’abal I identify a negotiation of heterogeneity and essentialism for the development of a cultural project that looks to the formation of a pluricultural, plurinational Guatemalan state.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [212]-230).

Thesis (M.A.)--Central Connecticut State University, 1999. / Thesis advisor: Antonio García-Lozada, Ph. D. "...in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Spanish." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 163-168).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-257). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2004. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 251-257). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4175. Adviser: Dara Goldman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 179-192) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.