Quando Madonna Virou Loira?

"Everybody" (1982) foi o primeiro single de Madonna que conquistou os topos das tabelas musicais norte-americanas. Invocando a minha infância nos EUA, recordo muito bem a importância que a Madonna teve para os jovens, filhos de pais emigrantes. Como é do conhecimento geral, os EUA apresentam uma grande hibridez em termos de raças e culturas e desde cedo, os jovens têm a tendência de formar grupos com quem sentem uma maior identificação iconográfica e sociocultural, uma vez que partilham a mesma língua-mãe, a mesma cultura musical, o mesmo estrato social, etc. O facto de ser filho de pais portugueses significava que não tinha lugar em determinados grupos. Lembro-me muito bem que os meus amigos eram quase sempre de descendência hispânica, latino-europeia e latino-americana, logo, pertencentes a uma classe social mais baixa. Na escola marcávamos a diferença (...)
Madonna conseguiu penetrar nesta hibridez e, apropriando-se de um estilo, de certa forma, “americanizado”, manteve um vincado orgulho em exibir as suas raízes e origens, o que fez com que conquistasse um público muito diversificado (...)


texto em construção.

EQUALS

My Favorite Lilith

Child Language and Gender

Jorge Correia Orfão

Master in Feminist Studies

FLUC

Seminário de Feminismo e Linguística

February the 10th of 2011

Abstract

This essay intends to assess how language and gender are related to society, helping us understand that both constitute an individual’s social identity. When we learn a language, we are being socialized and influenced by patterns of doing language/actions. Considering that socialization has its foundation on the development of language, I will expand the idea of how gender roles are socially acquired. Illustrating Mary Talbot and Deborah Cameron’s “feminist critique of language”, I will focus on the analysis of how language acquisition may influence children’s gendering processes. In order to contextualize the relationship between language and gender acquisition, I will present an outline of theories of language development and will explore the usage-based theory of language acquisition, in which Michael Tomasello explains the foundational social-cognitive skills of child language. Subsequently, I will comment on a short episode of Phineas and Ferb, a cartoon show produced by the Disney Channel, in order to evaluate the extent how such programs may (or may not) facilitate social development concerning language and gender. This review attempts to indicate how masculine and feminine features are represented in the cartoon show, considering some ethnographic outcomes presented in Marjorie Harness Goodwin’s investigations about children’s socialization. (...)

Queer Approaches Interpreting Trumpet, a novel by Jackie Kay

Jorge Correia Orfão

Master in Feminist Studies

FLUC

Seminário de Ficção, Memória e História

February the 4th of 2011

 

Transgender history should allow the gender ambiguous to speak (…) necessary because without

such histories, we are left with only a bare trace of a life lived in defiance of gender norms.

(Halberstam 2005: 49)

Abstract

The following essay is based on Jackie Kay’s novel, Trumpet (1998), winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize. I will attempt to explore to what extent does the prefix “trans-” disrupt our conventional categories of gender and sexuality, and to what extent does it reinforce them. Showing how the different characters of the novel speak about Joss and Millie Moody’s “secret”, I will try to demonstrate how identity is constructed or “performed”. The essay draws on Michel Foucault’s “discursive fact” theory that illustrates “the regime of power-knowledge-pleasure that sustains the discourse on human sexuality” (Foucault 1998/1978: 11). His discussion about gender and sexuality will help us reflect about what post-foucaultian queer theorists have to say about such issues.

Queer theorist, Judith Butler, presents a scheme that involves the distinction between performance and “performativity” (Butler 1990). Considering the fact that “heterosexuality” is legitimized as the norm, the idea of “heteronormativity” will help justify the subjectivity “discourses” may assume. This will help to account for Judith Halberstam’s discussion about the transgender life. She explains the motivations to read and/or write about the transgender subject. Summarizing Jay Prosser’s transgender theories, Halberstam underlines Prosser’s critic towards the theory of “performativity”. Her argumentations will suggest a distinction between “the real” and the “realness” of individuals like Joss Moody. I will report to how the “realness” of Joss’s identity is “(re)presented” and interpreted. By remembering the life of the main character, core ideas in the history and development of gender studies and gender theory are examined in each section of the essay.

The essay presents eight sections in which different theorists will be mentioned. Each section comments on a theoretical topic that has its own contribution in the continuing development of queer theory/theories. Such theories have approached relevant social issues that help explain how gender and sexuality is being managed within communities. Each section introduces a topic that requires further studies. What is important to note is the fact that, if we link each topic presented, it will help support the response to what I am aiming to explore, when one thinks about the transgender subject. The interpretation of the novel I propose, seeks to evaluate how queer theory can be analyzed through literature. This will enhance the idea that through literature, sociological approaches can be evaluated and expanded. (...)

in red: revision/reediting needed

Women In Red: Almodovarian Representations of Gender

Abstract

Jorge Correia Orfão

Master in Feminist Studies

FLUC

Methodologies Seminar

February the 18th of 2011

The following interpretation of Pedro Almodóvar’s film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (1988) will address gender representation by analyzing the leading female characters of the film. After a period of repression and censorship as a result of the Franco dictatorship, democracy was established in Spain, and the country underwent a process of modernization. In order to understand why Pedro Almodóvar’s films are of interés nacional, I will briefly place him within the context of Spanish National Cinema. This will help us understand not only the intertextual references in Almodóvar’s movies to the Modern Art period of the second quarter of the twentieth century, but also how he represents masculinity and femininity through modern techniques of doing art cinema. The purpose of such an interpretation is to display gender as something that can be “represented”, raising further discussion on the performative nature of gender as something that is not innate. Almodóvar’s films have been heavily debated, analyzed, praised and criticized, and of course, Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios is not an exception. One thing is certain though: no matter how hopeless and ironic some scenes are, there is a certain vitality that always comes through and finds an echo in the viewers. (...)

"When Man Enters Woman"

When man

enters woman,

like the surf biting the shore,

again and again,

and the woman opens her mouth in pleasure

and her teeth gleam

like the alphabet,

Logos appears milking a star,

and the man

inside of woman

ties a knot

so that they will

never again be separate

and the woman

climbs into a flower

and swallows its stem

and Logos appears

and unleashed their rivers.

This man,

this woman

with their double hunger,

have tried to reach through

the curtain of God

and briefly they have,

though God

in His perversity

unties the knot.

Anne Sexton