Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production

Description

In Abject Performances Leticia Alvarado draws out the irreverent, disruptive aesthetic strategies used by Latino artists and cultural producers who shun standards of respectability that are typically used to conjure concrete minority identities. In place of works imbued with pride, redemption, or celebration, artists such as Ana Mendieta, Nao Bustamante, and the Chicano art collective known as Asco employ negative affects—shame, disgust, and unbelonging—to capture experiences that lie at the edge of the mainstream, inspirational Latino-centered social justice struggles. Drawing from a diverse expressive archive that ranges from performance art to performative testimonies of personal faith-based subjection, Alvarado illuminates modes of community formation and social critique defined by a refusal of identitarian coherence that nonetheless coalesce into Latino affiliation and possibility. Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 10 Introduction. Sublime Abjection......Page 14 Chapter 1. Other Desires: Ana Mendieta’s Abject Imaginings......Page 38 Chapter 2. Phantom Assholes: Asco’s Affective Vortex......Page 70 Chapter 3. Of Betties Decorous and Abject: Ugly Betty’s America la fea and Nao Bustamante’s America la bella......Page 102 Chapter 4. Arriving at Apostasy: Performative Testimonies of Ambivalent Belonging......Page 144 Conclusion. Abject Embodiment......Page 174 Notes......Page 180 Bibliography......Page 206 A......Page 222 C......Page 223 G......Page 224 L......Page 225 M......Page 226 R......Page 227 U......Page 228 Z......Page 229 Color Plates......Page 234