Intertexts

E d i t o r s ’ I n t r o d u c t i o n This special inaugural issue of Intertexts was inspired by Texas Tech University’s Twenty-Eighth Annual Comparative Literature Symposium, entitled“LatinAmericanWomenWriters:Canons,Traditions,^visions,” held in January 1995, along with an interdisciplinary sister symposium dedicated to Latin American women, sponsored by the Latin American Area Studies Program. The success of the two conferences is areflection of the increasing interest in Latin American women and their writings. These authors have been celebrated for creating works that challenge inherited literary discourses and traditional genres. Their works deconstruct culturallydictated distinctions between the public and the private spheres in societies that have typically assigned women to the latter and authors to the former. Many women writers not only explore social and political themes in their works but also deploy literary strategies as political gestures, in the process disarming cultural and literary codes they find too restrictive to represent their realities. The Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, whose private pain as mothers incited them to enter the public sphere as protestors, have become authors as well, writing poetry about their experiences. Similarly, Me llamo Ri£oberta Menchoey ast me nacio la conciencia serves as another work which problematizes the relations between the personal and the political and between the production and the consumption of literary texts, at the same time as it questions certain basic assumptions about what constitutes an a u t h o r . Central to the work of many Latin American women writers is acritical attention to language. Realizing that juridical structures of language and politics produce the subjects that they represent/control, these writers demonstrate aconcern for both the arbitrary nature of language and the ways in which it influences definitions and perceptions of the female self Many of their works incite readers to be suspicious of established codes, patterns and discourses, to deconstruct those codes and discourses and to imagine ways in which they might be constructed differently. These writers also challenge the dominant discourses that dictate the value systems, institutions, and power structures in their societies. Scholars who study the texts of Latin American and Latina women writers often highlight anumber of interrelated issues that can be brought together under the general categories of textuality and sexuality. The category of textuality includes not only the attention to language discussed above, but also an exploration of resistant writing and reading strategies. The category of sexuality embraces not only lived and imagined erotic experiences but also the relationships among sexualities, subjectivities, politics, and genders. 5 I N T E R T E X T S 6 Writing as resistance is seen in many of the works explored by critics in this volume. In Debra Castillo’s study of the Chicana author Demetria Martinez’s novel MotherTongm^ critic, author, and narrator all share a concern for the ways in which words serve to (mis)represent reality and subjectivity. Both reading and writing become recuperative acts as readers of Martinez’s novel revisit the recent history of relations between El Salvador and the United States, and characters in the novel reconstruct their own sense of personal, cultural, and historical identity. Mary Jane Treacy’s article, “A Politics of the Word,” also looks at women’s engagement with political action. Her study of two novellas by Salvadorean ClaribelAlegria examines the struggles of bourgeois women find independence firom their domesticity through participation in progressive politics. In Despierta mi bien, despierta, the protagonist explores sexual liberation as apath to independence, but ultimately discovers that herownliberationmustincludemorethantheexpressionofhersexuality. For Cristina Peri Rossi, on the other hand, sexuality is always already political.RosemaryGeisdorferFeal’sarticleon“QueerTheory,Sexualityand Women’s Writing firom LatinAmerica:The Case of Cristina Peri Rossi” looks at erotic texts by the Uruguayan author as prime examples of the ways that theoriesofsexualityandperformativityintersect.Fealalsoquestionshow queer theory might most productively be employed in Hispanic studies. Sharon Magnarelli’s article on “MasculineActs/Anxious Encounters: abinaBerman’sEntreVillayunamujerdesnuda”examinestheMexican Payasanexplorationofgenderperformativityandcitationalperformance. MagnareUistudiesboththefiramedramaandtheembeddeddrama gghtingtheanxietiesofmasculinityasperformance. Justastheseauthorsemploydifferentliterarystrategies,sotoodotheir textsoftendemanddifferentreadingstrategies.VeronicaGrossi’scontri¬ butionon“PoliticalMeta-AllegoryinSorJuana’sElDivinoNarciso” focusesonSorJuana’sstrategicdeploymentofallegoryasameansof affirming afeminine intellectual perspective, thereby subverting traditional, patriarchal hermeneutics. LauraJ.Beard’sstudyofthemetatextofArgentineauthorLuisa Futoransky shows how the...