Gender and culture in Journal of Santa María de Edgardo Rivera Martínez

Abstract

Defining the category "woman" implies recognizing the differences that exist between individuals who register under this category. These differences can be fundamentally by age, class, ethnicity, sexual option, among others. I propose to analyze the novel by Edgardo Rivera Martinez Diario de Santa María (Santillana, 2008) from a perspective that uses Gender Studies as an artifact that makes it possible to demonstrate the aforementioned hierarchies. In this novel, sexuality and culture represent central roles such as modernity, art, homoeroticism, religious and social norms in an Andean society. Gender relations are at the core of cultural constructions and of the identities that women seek to form in the early twentieth century. The discursive analysis will be defined from the proposals and approaches of Nira Yuval-Davis, who emphasizes on issues of gender and nation; Judith Butler with her proposal of appropriation and subversion; and, in the aspect of culture and society, I will take the proposals of Antonio Cornejo Polar from the perspective of a heterogeneous subject.