The Struggle to Gain Hegemony: Popular Culture in Feminine Mexican Narrative of the Nineties
Abstract
The purpose of the present study was to investigate Popular culture in Mexican literature written by women in the nineties as a site of gendered negotiation discussion of feminine identity and national identity in the feminine figure. Under the interdisciplinary Cultural studies paradigm with its neogramscian perspective based on the concept of hegemony, popular culture allows the debate of women as a subaltern group where hegemony is not only related to a class struggle but to a struggle between sexes. Hegemony between sexes and its relevance in the formation of feminine subjectivity and national identity in the feminine figure has been a concern in the writings of Mexican authors, Rosario Castellanos, Elena Garro and Elena Poniatowska. In the nineties these inquiries are developed in Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate and Sara Sefchovich's Demasiado amor through popular culture forms. Mexican cooking, serial novels, Mexican golden age movies, romantic urban songs, are webbed in both novels around the romance formula, the love story, having Mexico as their site. Mixing these elements reaffirms the space of popular culture within Mexican national culture and also brings the simultaneous presence of patriarchal and nationalist discourses into the two narratives. Esquivel subverts conventional feminine and masculine representations through their carnivalization. But the chaos of the parodic universe in Como agua para chocolate is resolved within the dominant order and the proposed opposition turns out to be not a reflection but a characterization of feminine identity in relation to man and nation. Sefchovich builds her novel with the prescribed forms and images; but at the same time dissects them. This double movement brings to the surface elements of popular culture present in patriarchal and nationalist discourses that subordinate the concept of feminine identity to their conventions. It also enables to recognize those aspects of popular culture that carry alternative values to oppose those constructions that are foreign to women. The use of popular culture in Demasiado amor relates the inquiries about feminine identity and national identity in the feminine figure to a broader socio-political process where the only possible answer to them is their fragmentation.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Hart, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Latin American literature|Mass communications|Folklore|Womens studies
Off-Campus Purdue Users:
To access this dissertation, please log in to our
proxy server.