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Gender Transgression and Hegemony: the Politics of Gender Expression and Sexuality in Contemporary Managua

Petrus, John Stephen
http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3505-3132
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429609857

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Spanish and Portuguese.
In this dissertation I study transgressive gender expression and performance in contemporary Nicaragua (1979-present) in order learn about how distinctive strategies of gender expression relate to the coloniality of power and knowledge and transnational political ideologies. I show how Nicaraguan performers contend with, mediate, critique, and/or reinforce expectations of gender performance promoted by local and global centers of power. The goal of this project is to provide a better understanding of how coloniality has continued to function with respect to gender performance in very recent years and also to highlight the brave, complex, creative, and astute cultural interventions that are being created by Nicaraguan artists and performers that grapple with oppressive gender systems. I carry out my analysis by reading and engaging intellectually with audio-visual cultural texts from a variety of media including performance art, television programs, short documentaries, low-budget videos, film, and photography produced in the last two decades. Specifically, I analyze the gender performances in the television show International News Network in chapter 1, in recent Nicaraguan film and video productions in chapter 2, in Elyla Sinverguenza’s performance art in chapter 3, and in annual diversidad sexual events LGBTI Pride and Operacion Queer in chapter 4. I highlight gender transgression in these cultural texts in order to demonstrate and appreciate the cultural interventions being done by contemporary Nicaraguan artists, activists, and thinkers to actively contest compulsory heterosexuality, violent masculinity, hegemonic normative gender roles, and State and international sexual politics. I focus specifically on representations and performances of and by Nicaragua’s sexual diversity due to the fact that these individuals are both 1) particular targets of gender policing and gendered violence, and 2) the most active transgressors of gender norms in their cultural texts and their everyday lives. I show how gender performance for Nicaragua’s sexual diversity is a complex negotiation between identity politics, State ideologies, geo-political pressures, and local cultures and traditions. In order to study gender transgression in these media, I engage with a variety of theoretical lines of inquiry that help to frame the questions listed above and to apply them to the context of contemporary Managua. I draw from the discussion in Latin American Cultural Studies on coloniality, particularly its relation to gender roles and categories, in order to view gender performance and transgression as it relates to a long-standing system of domination and oppression in Latin America. I draw on political theory, especially that of neoliberalism, in order to show how economic and political systems influence representational strategies and body politics in diversidad sexual communities. Finally, Queer theory has taken on the task of de-naturalizing and deconstructing sexual dimorphism, the heterosexual-homosexual binary, and the viability of identity politics. In this way, it has provided an approximation to gender and sexuality studies that focuses on performativity and the social construction of masculinities and femininities. I implement this theoretical approximation to show how gender expression is a practice that can support or contest hegemonies.
Ileana Rodriguez (Advisor)
Laura Podalsky (Committee Chair)
Guisela Latorre (Committee Member)
238 p.
Art History; Film Studies; Gender; Gender Studies; Glbt Studies; Latin American Studies; Womens Studies
Nicaragua, Gender, Sexuality, Performance, Visual Culture, Latin America, Performance, Drag, Film, Television, Queer Theory

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Petrus, J. S. (2015). Gender Transgression and Hegemony: the Politics of Gender Expression and Sexuality in Contemporary Managua [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429609857

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Petrus, John. Gender Transgression and Hegemony: the Politics of Gender Expression and Sexuality in Contemporary Managua. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429609857.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Petrus, John. "Gender Transgression and Hegemony: the Politics of Gender Expression and Sexuality in Contemporary Managua." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1429609857

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1429609857
982
© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.