Faces, bodies, and spaces: Differential identity construction in Mexicana and Chicana narrative.

This dissertation examines the intersections and imbrication of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality in the narrative of five Mexican women writers and two Chicana writers. The aim of this border approach is to problematize manifestations of difference in Mexican society through compilation and analysis of writers', characters', and readers' voices. I have chosen works by five contemporary Mexican women writers (Guadalupe Loaeza, Ethel Krauze, Rosamaria Roffiel, Carmen Boullosa, and Sylvia Molina) and two Chicanas (Erlinda Gonzales-Berry and Sandra Cisneros) who examine simultaneously class, ethnicity, gender, and, at times, sexual preference. These narrative works offer a border reading that problematizes difference, subjectivity, and social spaces. The analysis of these pluralistic subjectivities, and the literary mechanisms used to create and frame them, form the core of this dissertation, one from which I cast a more transformative critical tool to be used in understanding the inherently multiple and heterogeneous identity of the postmodern subject. The theoretical underpinnings of this study are those which grapple with the interweaving of gender, class, and ethnicity in the creation of identity. Such a notion is grounded in the concept of the rhizome, as conceived by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and strives to reflect the complexity of the connections and negotiations between multiple elements of subjectivity and different subjects. Yet, beyond this general framework, the theories which inform the textual analysis of this study further contribute to a transnational dialogue between Latin America, the U.S., and Europe. Concepts of masking and face developed by Rosario Castellanos and Octavio Paz are juxtaposed with those posited by Mikhail Bakhtin and Gloria Anzaldua. Severo Sarduy's writings on the body dialogue with those by Judith Butler and Jose Esteban Munoz. And finally, Jessica Benjamin's and Setha Low's ideas of space converse with those of Gloria Anzaldua and Pat Mora. By means of an integration of literary and audience analysis, this study attempts to elicit a theoretical model uniquely capable of evoking a broader and more complex view of subjectivity than has been attempted in studies to date, thus contributing potentially groundbreaking research to a fecund yet relatively unexamined literary corpus.Ph.D.American literatureEthnic studiesLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsLatin American literatureSocial SciencesWomen's studiesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124688/2/3150216.pd