Browsing by Subject "Gendered violence"

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The corporeality of trauma, memory, and resistance : writing the body in contemporary fiction from Chile and Argentina
(2014-05) Tille-Victorica, Nancy Jacqueline; Lindstrom, Naomi, 1950-; Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Héctor; Heinzelman, Susan Sage; Robbins, Jill; Wettlaufer, Alexandra
This dissertation looks at the representation and impact of gendered violence in the novel Pasos bajo el agua (1986) and in the short stories in Ofrenda de propia piel (2004) by Argentine author and former political prisoner Alicia Kozameh (b. 1953), as well as in Jamás el fuego nunca (2007) and Impuesto a la carne (2010), two novels by Chilean writer Diamela Eltit (b. 1949). By examining the particular expressions of physical and psychological pain in the aforementioned texts, I demonstrate that Kozameh and Eltit write the female body to simultaneously represent a corporeality that, until recently, has rarely been expressed in literature, and reconstruct a body that has been traumatized by state-sponsored violence and by what could be considered economic violence. Both of them denounce violence, torture, disappearances, exile, and indifference to justice as painful events that not only damage the spirits of the victims, but that are also inscribed upon the physical body. I also show how each author addresses the overlapping of individual and collective traumatic memories and how these are felt in the body as well. Finally, I argue that writing the materiality of the lived body, from its vulnerability to its resilience, provides for Kozameh and Eltit valuable insight into the ways in which female bodies are able to resist and reassess the meaning imposed on them by legally-endorsed and non-official systems of oppression. Their work thus has direct viii social relevance that goes beyond feminism's countering of male dominance and women's rights. Yet, I also show that they manifest their feminist commitment by using the voice and body of female subjects to incorporate marginalized Chilean and Argentine bodies into the linguistic realm in order to provide a fuller understanding of female corporeality in Latin America.
More than survival : literary representations of Indigenous women in 21st century México
(2023-07-27) Sánchez Flores, Jessica L.; McDonough, Kelly S., 1970-; Cárcamo-Huechante, Luis E; Domínguez-Ruvalcaba, Héctor; Gutiérrez, Laura G.
In this dissertation, I engage in an interdisciplinary and critical conversation on contemporary Indigenous cultural production, with particular emphasis on gendered violence, self-representation, and survivance. Gerald Vizenor (2008) coined the term survivance, and it centers Indigenous stories beyond victimhood (1). In my dissertation, I show how Indigenous people of México use literature to navigate and critique landscapes of violence and dispossession while simultaneously proposing a vision of survivance rather than perpetual victimhood. Various scholars have studied Indigenous women’s self-representation and their creative work in Latin America (Arias, 2013; McDonough 2014; Coon 2015; del Valle Escalante, 2015; Chacón, 2018). In my dissertation, I move these discussions forward by focusing on the various ways Indigenous women challenge expectations (Deloria 2004) both in their own communities and beyond. I analyze the works created by Indigenous individuals affiliated with the three most spoken Indigenous languages in México–Nahuatl, Zapotec, and Maya. In the first chapter, I focus on well-known Nahua playwright Ildefonso Maya Hernández's play Pitah Chacatzintla (1964; 1971) which presents us with a window into the life of a Nahua woman in the 1960s. In the second chapter I analyze Maya Yucatec author Sol Ceh Moo’s bilingual (Spanish and Maya Yucatec) novel Chen tumeen chu’úpen…/Sólo por ser mujer (2015) and the ways Honorina’s character challenges multiple violence(s). In the third chapter, I discuss Indigenous women and pleasure with Zapotec poet Irma Pineda’s erotic poetry book Naxiña’ Rului’ladxe’ / Rojo Deseo (2018). Moreover, I underline how the protagonists negotiate dominant-culture expectations and promote their own narratives and representations of indigeneity in México from the 1960s to the present day. As a move toward an anti-colonial methodology, cosas de mujeres (women’s things) helps me build a theoretical framework based on lived female experiences. I participated in actions such as sewing and cooking as generative, knowledge-producing activities that often occur in the kitchen to co-create knowledge(s) with them (Brooks 2006). In sum, this project sheds new light on contemporary Nahua, Zapotec, and Maya protagonists as weavers of their own stories, who are a part of, and significant contributors to Mexican society and the world at large.