El sabor del amor y del dolor: violence, affect and the (trans)body in the Chican@ historical imaginary

Galarte, Johanna F.

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Description

Title

El sabor del amor y del dolor: violence, affect and the (trans)body in the Chican@ historical imaginary

Author(s)

Galarte, Johanna F.

Issue Date

2011-08-26T15:34:18Z

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Darder, Antonia

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Darder, Antonia

Committee Member(s)

• Mayo, Cris S.
• Cacho, Lisa M.
• Perez, Emma M.

Department of Study

Educ Policy, Orgzn & Leadrshp

Discipline

Educational Policy Studies

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Transgender
• Queer
• Affect
• Chicano Studies
• Pedagogy

Abstract

El Sabor del Amor y del Dolor is a study of the representation of Transgender and gender non-conforming Chican@s and traces the absence and presence of this population in the Chicana/o Historical imaginary. I examine how the transgender and gender non-conforming Chican@ body complicates categories of gender, sex and sexuality in the fields of Queer, Transgender and Chicana/o Studies. Through a theoretical lens informed by Chicana feminist, Queer and Affect Studies I argue for the transgender and gender non-conforming racialized body as a pedagogical site for understanding how transgender and gender non-conforming Chican@s make the world intelligible for themselves. In my research I trace the affective strategies that transgender and gender non-conforming Chican@s utilize for survival in the face of harassment, institutional neglect and violence, while pointing to these strategies as possible sites of resistance. Building on the work of Queer Chicana Feminist scholars, I maintain that the transgender and gender non-conforming body confounds Aztlán’s masculinist and heteropatriarchal symbolic field of signification, therefore a new lengua and new symbolic field must emerge. This strategy represents “ el sabor del amor y del dolor” that springs from Pérez’s call for perverting of psychoanalysis, thereby positing a decolonial and perverse interpretive strategy to study the radically perverse. Borrowing form Emma Pérez’s Decolonial Imaginary, the dissertation has two “case study” chapters wherein the interpretive strategy el sabor del amor y del dolor is deployed. These two case study chapters include a reading of Emma Perez’s historical novel, Forgetting the Alamo, Or, Blood Memory and a “re-framing” of the life and death of Gwen Amber Rose Araujo. The dissertation concludes by returning to Paulo Freire’s formulation of pedagogy as an indispensible methodology for teaching values about what it means to live in this world and to relate to other human beings. Reflecting on the arguments made in the body of the work, this study breaks through, crosses, transgresses, and disrupts how transgender and gender non-conforming Chican@s are discursively constructed in Aztlán, I move conversation towards creating new solidarities and methodologies in the form of “Travesía Pedagogy”. Having discussed at length the impact of psychic and somatic violence that accompanies transphobia, homophobia and racism, I conclude with possibilities for healing. How do we circumvent the proliferation of homophobic, transphobic, and racist discourses in our worlds? What does it truly mean to move towards a world where Chican@s as a people do not hate ourselves or terrorize ourselves or each other both in the home and in schools?

Graduation Semester

2011-08

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2011 Johanna F. Galarte

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