El Cuepro Nacional O Lo Nacional En El Cuerpo: El Performance Identitario En La Narrativa Contemporanea Puertorriquena

Resumen del Libro

This dissertation explores the relationship between national identity, body and performance in contemporary Puerto Rican literature. My argument is that we perform our national identity through our bodies. This work explores definitions of performance as the way we embody identities, in other words, the way in which the body itself becomes part of the process of producing an identity. That is why the notion of body exteriority is very important in this study and the ways this corporality is represented and symbolized. Also, how national discourse inscribes different corporalities of the body. Thus, I begin by establishing an historical outline of how Puerto Rican identity has been defined from the beginning of the 20th century to this day. I start by looking at texts by authors such as Antonio S. Pedreira, Tomas Blanco, Rene Marques and Jose Luis Gonzalez. These works are contextualized with a discussion of texts by contemporary thinkers such as Arcadio Diaz Quinones, Carlos Pabon and Ruben Rios Avila. Also, I establish a theoretical framework, which analyzes performance and body theories using the works of Judith Butler and Elizabeth Grosz. A close reading of the narrative of Luis Rafael Sanchez uncovers how his writing embodies social practices. I dedicated most of the second chapter to the novel La guaracha del Macho Camacho (1976) because this text presents the body as a field where national identity finds its significance. In the third chapter I explore the transcendence of the body and how national identity is performed in some of the texts by Ana Lydia Vega, Edgardo Rodriguez Julia and Mayra Santos Febres. Finally, in the fourth chapter I look at the role that music plays in the (re)construction of identities. Music such as bomba, plena, salsa and bolero are crucial in the discursive production of national identity. My conclusion is that the body is a critical part in the way we performs our identity.