Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature Commons™
Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Discipline
Articles 1 - 2 of 2
Full-Text Articles in Spanish and Portuguese Language and Literature
(Ef)Facing The Face Of Nationalism: Wrestling Masks In Chicano And Mexican Performance Art , Robert Neustadt
(Ef)Facing The Face Of Nationalism: Wrestling Masks In Chicano And Mexican Performance Art , Robert Neustadt
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Masks serve as particularly effective props in contemporary Mexican and Chicano performance art because of a number of deeply rooted traditions in Mexican culture. This essay explores the mask as code of honor in Mexican culture, and foregrounds the manner in which a number of contemporary Mexican and Chicano artists and performers strategically employ wrestling masks to (ef)face the mask-like image of Mexican or U.S. nationalism. I apply the label "performance artist" broadly, to include musicians and political figures that integrate an exaggerated sense of theatricality into their performances. Following the early work of Roland Barthes, I read performances as …
Hegemony And Identity: The Chicano Hybrid In Francisco X. Alarcón's Snake Poems , George Hartley
Hegemony And Identity: The Chicano Hybrid In Francisco X. Alarcón's Snake Poems , George Hartley
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Snake Poems renegotiates power relations between the discourse of Spanish imperialism and Aztec poetic practice. Alarcón's extended poem enacts a process of ethnic, cultural, and spiritual identification through a confrontation between texts—Alarcón's original poems, passages of commentary from the Spanish Inquisitor Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón's treatise on Aztec spells and invocations, and the Aztec spells themselves in the original Náhuatl, the Aztec language. Each of these three layers of text represents a unique and competing people, ideology, and culture, and it is the clash and the hybrid fusion of these distinct discourses that Alarcón the poet stages in Snake Poems …