Destabilizing Machismo: Masculine and Feminine Constructions in the Theater of Susana Torres Molina

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Date
2003-05-16
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Virginia Tech
Abstract

This thesis explores the construction of masculinity in Argentina, as represented in two plays by Susana Torres Molina, ...Y a otra cosa mariposa (1981) and Una noche cualquiera (1999). In these two plays, the construction of sexual difference is portrayed as occurring within a masculine point of view, wherein it is explicit that men have the power to define, from a self-referential standpoint, their masculine identity, through contrast with a construction of the female. Rather than consider masculine and feminine as two parts of the same whole, gender, Torres Molina's works represent machismo as a two-part system, with masculine and female as distinct wholes, fundamentally different. The self-referentiality of machismo rejects the participation of women, subordinating and reducing them to the level of the object of conversation, characterized by biological essentialisms, instead of a constructed, subjective identity.

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Feminine Writing, State Terrorism in Argentina, Susana Torres Molina, Gender, Sexual Differences, Machismo
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