Looking for Something to Signify

Something to Signify Gender Performance and Cuban Masculinity in Viva

in Screen Bodies
Author:
David Yagüe González Texas A&M University, USA yaguegonzalez@tamu.edu

Search for other papers by David Yagüe González in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close
Restricted access

Abstract

The behaviors and actions that an individual carries out in their daily life and how they are translated by their society overdetermine the gender one might have—or not—according to social norms. However, do the postulates enounced by feminist and queer Western thinkers still maintain their validity when the context changes? Can the performances of gender carry out their validity when the landscape is other than the one in Europe or the United States? And how can the context of drag complicate these matters? These are the questions that this article will try to answer by analyzing the 2015 movie Viva by Irish director Paddy Breathnach.

Contributor Notes

David Yagüe González is a fifth-year Graduate Student from Texas A&M University in the Department of Hispanic Studies and is a member of the research group Estudios de Género en el Ambito de los Países de Habla Inglesa of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has a PhD in African American literature from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid with a dissertation that mainly focused on Toni Morrison's works and trauma. During his research, he worked at Harvard University as a teaching assistant and Spanish instructor in the Romance Languages and Literatures Department, where he was the Co-Chair of the Transatlantic Studies Research Group. He has published articles on biopolitics, animality, and gender, with his article “Animalidad y Animalización en Amores Perros” published in Miriada Hispánica (2017) and his article “El ruiseñor enfermo: narrative y género en los cuentos de Efrén Hernández” published in the volume “Mirar no es como ver”: estudios y ensayos sobre la obra de Efrén Hernández (2018). Email: yaguegonzalez@tamu.edu

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Screen Bodies

The Journal of Embodiment, Media Arts, and Technology

  • Breathnach, Paddy. 2015. Viva. Ireland and Cuba.

  • Gutiérrez, Tomás, and Juan Carlos Tabío. 1993. Fresa y Chocolate [Strawberry and Chocolate]. Cuba.

  • Livingston, Jennie. 1990. Paris Is Burning. USA.

  • Anzaldúa, Gloria. 2009. “To(O) Queer the Writer—Loca, Escritora Y Chicana.” In The Gloria Anzaldúa Reader, ed. AnaLouise Keating, 163175. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

  • Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York: Routledge.

  • Cortés, Jason. 2015. Macho Ethics: Masculinity and Self-Representation in Latino-Caribbean Narrative. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • De Beauvoir, Simone. 2010. The Second Sex. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

  • Edelman, Lee. 1994. Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: Routledge.

  • Edelman, Lee. 2004. No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

  • Ferguson, Roderick A. 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

  • González Pagés, Julio César. 2002. “Género Y Masculinidad en Cuba: ¿El Otro Lado De Una Historia?” [Gender and masculinity in Cuba: The other side of a story?], Nueva Antropología: Revista De Ciencias Sociales [New anthropology: Review of the social sciences] 18 (61): 118126. https://revistas-colaboracion.juridicas.unam.mx/index.php/nueva-antropologia/article/view/15832/14153.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • González Pagés, Julio César. 2010. Macho, Varón, Masculino: Estudio De Masculinidades en Cuba [Macho, male, masculine: A study of masculinities in Cuba]. Havana: Editorial de la Mujer.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Molloy, Sylvia. 2012. “The Politics of Posing.” In Hispanisms and Homosexualities, ed. Sylvia Molloy and Robert McKee Irwin, 141160. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Muñoz, José Esteban. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Muñoz, José Esteban. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press.

  • Quaresma da Silva, Denise, and Oscar Ulloa Guerra. 2012. “Masculinidades en Cuba: Legitimación De Una Dimensión De Los Estudios De Género” [Masculinities in Cuba: Legitimation of a dimension of gender studies], Revista De Estudios Sociales [Review of social studies] 42: 93103. https://journals.openedition.org/revestudsoc/6970?lang=fr.

    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation
  • Warren, Calvin. 2017. “Onticide: Afro-Pessimism, Gay Nigger #1, and Surplus Violence.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 23 (3): 391418. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/659880.

    • Crossref
    • Search Google Scholar
    • Export Citation

Metrics

All Time Past Year Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 1401 345 242
Full Text Views 65 4 0
PDF Downloads 103 4 0