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Article

'On the Shores of Politics': La Raulito¡¯s (Dis)Figurations

Details

Citation

Olivera GE (2013) 'On the Shores of Politics': La Raulito¡¯s (Dis)Figurations. Journal of Romance Studies, 13 (2), pp. 62-93. https://doi.org/10.3828/jrs.13.2.62

Abstract
This article offers a contribution to an under-researched aspect of the history of Argentine cinema, namely that of LGBT visibility. It argues that even though there was no affi rmative LGBT identity discourse in the country¡¯s fi lm theory and practice of the 1960s and 1970s, there was indeed an onscreen indirect inclusion of the non-heteronormative. It offers a close reading of cross-dressing, mobility and space in figures regulated by the order of abjection. Departing from other critical readings of the character¡¯s identity as 'socially inassimilable¡¯, ¡®ambiguous¡¯ or ¡®undefined¡¯, it contends that she is a site of ¡®passage across gender and sexuality¡¯ that is regulated by incommensurability and undecidability ¨C double exclusion and double participation ¨C rather than gender ambivalence or polysemy. On the one hand, it argues that dragLa Raulito/Little Raoul (Mur¨²a 1974¨C5), through the analysis of performative subverts normative continuity sex/gender and identity/gender performance. On the other hand, it focuses on how the sexual abjection of lesbianism itself as ¡®lived unintelligibility¡¯ operates as it constitutes a case study of how the historico-fi lmic frames of intelligibility of the period abject and unname sexuality (lesbian childhood/adolescence) through gender (i.e., through the socially visible/framable forms of gender inversion and gender crossing for social survival as intelligible cultural confi gurations).the very intelligibility of the protagonist¡¯s identity by breaking the (hetero)proscription and erasure rather than prohibition or repression. In this sense, it constitutes a case study of how the historico-filmic frames of intelligibility of the period abject and unname sexuality (lesbian childhood/adolescence) through gender (i.e., through the socially visible/framable forms of gender inversion and gender crossing for social survival as intelligible cultural configurations).

Keywords
abjection; mobility; (trans)gender; (in)visibility; (un)namability; Argentine cinema; LGBT frames of intelligibility; drag performativity

Journal
Journal of Romance Studies: Volume 13, Issue 2

StatusPublished
Funders
Publication date31/08/2013
Publication date online2013
URL
PublisherBerghahn
ISSN1473-3536
eISSN1752-2331

Projects (1)