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Negociando rúpturas
y "feminismos":
deseo, cuerpo y política en el cabaret mexicano
The primary focus of this presentation
is to situate the contested concept of "cabaret" within Mexican
culture. In other words, within this national and cultural context, cabaret
signifies a myriad of possibilities: from a particular (sub)cultural practice,
crystallized in the films of decades gone by and which centered around
women's bodies as objects for sell, to the strategic deployment of this
practice by contemporary dissident performers. My principal aim is to
explore the manner in which the female body continues to be a nexus between
these two distinctive possibilities.
In order to best approach and understand this apparently opposing use
of the cabaret, I will first concentrate on a discussion of Mexican feminisms
and its multiple (and often contradictory) theorizations of the female
body. From this, I will then move to a more focused study of the female
body within the various forms of cabaret in Mexican culture: working class
neighborhood dance halls; cinematographical depictions, now congealed
in the Mexican imaginary; and, lastly, the more contemporary and political
uses of the concept. This discussion will, inevitably, lead me to further
explore the ruptures that have also occurred within Mexican cultural production
and consumption: what is the relationship between popular culture and
avant-garde artistic production? Rather than trying to create categories
and taxonomy of the cabaret, what I will ultimately propose is that the
divides
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