Disidentification, (Non)Normativity and the Gothic in Contemporary Latin American Women's Writing

Abstract

This thesis explores ways to resist normative regulation in a representative sample of literary texts by six contemporary Latin American women writers. Deploying an interdisciplinary framework informed by queer/cuir studies and decolonial feminisms, this thesis asserts that these writers recast the Anglo-American Gothic genre to participate in and narrate the contemporary struggle against intersectional forms of oppression, particularly those stemming from cisheteropatriarchy. Using `monstrosity' and `the female grotesque' as key analytical categories, this thesis demonstrates how normative codes are transgressed from within as strategies of disidentification. By understanding identity as a relational process, this thesis posits that in the texts, coalition politics are formed and enacted in favour of subaltern individuals without essentialising in-group differences. Overall, this thesis presents a new roadmap for Latin American Studies by situating the literary output of six contemporary women writers within the Gothic tradition, interweaving gender, feminist, and decolonial perspectives.