Modernity and the Nation in Mexican Representations of Masculinity

Hector Domínguez-Ruvalcabais Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Texas at Austin.

• Introduction * PART I: SENSUAL INTERVENTIONS * Sense of Sensuality * The Perturbing Dress: Transvestism in Visual Arts * PART II: THE HOMOSOCIAL PASIONS * Intimacy in the War: The Revolutionary Desire * The Sentimental Man: Educating Machos in Mexican Cinema * PART III: ENLIGHTENING MACHISMO * Building on the Negative: The Diagnosis of the Nation * Inferiority and Rancor: The Fearful Mestizo * PART IV: VANISHING IDENTITIES * Mayate: The Queerest Queer * The Invisible Man: Masculinity and Violence

"In this work, Dominguez-Ruvalcaba has achieved depth and scope by analyzing entire periods of Mexican nationalism through the lens of male body representations. The principal objective of this magnificent work is to explain clearly and insightfully how male body representations evolve and deconstruct themselves throughout the period from the 1870s to the present in Mexico, and to demonstrate their relationship to nationhood and Mexican modernity. This work opens a new era in the study of Mexican visual arts in relation to the formation and deformation of masculinity through male transvestism from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present." - Emilio Bejel, Professor of Spanish, University of California at Davis, and author of Gay Cuban Nation "This text nourishes bibliographies on masculinity and amply illustrates the field of Mexican modernity through the representation of masculine bodies. Dominguez-Ruvalcaba shows the aporias of this representation and the distinction between seeing and reading. He makes the compelling assertion that the representation of masculinity as sensuality is a way of normalizing the coloniality of power, and a medium for transforming being into performance. This is a timely contribution that will be valuable in both undergraduate and graduate courses." - Ileana Rodriguez, Humanities Distinguished Professor of Literatures and Cultures of Latin America, Ohio State University