THE PATRIARCHY PROBLEM: Sexism, Homophobia, and the Many Faces of Transgression to Normative Representations of Difference

THE PATRIARCHY PROBLEM

Sexism, Homophobia, and the Many Faces of Transgression to Normative Representations of Difference

TENTATIVE TRANSGRESSIONS: HOMOSEXUALITY, AIDS, AND THE THEATER IN BRAZIL. By Severino J. Albuquerque. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003. Pp. xiii+255. $29.95 paper.)

TEATRO DE CABARET- IMAGINARIOS DISIDENTES. By Gaston A. Alzate. (Irving, CA: Ediciones de Gestos, 2002. Pp. 160. $17.50 paper.)

TEATRO CONTEMPORANEO JUDEOARGENTINO: UNA PERSPECTIVA FEMINISTA BÎBLICA. By Matilde Raquel Holte. (Buenos Aires: Ensayos, 2004. Pp. 212.)

LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN ON/IN STAGES. By Margot Milleret. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. Pp. x+263. $45.00 cloth.)

HOLY TERRORS: LATIN AMERICAN WOMEN PERFORM. Edited by Diana Taylor and Roselyn Costantino. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Pp. 464. $84.95 cloth, $23.95 paper.)

As several literary, social science, history, and cultural studies specialists have noted,1 current interest in Latin American gender issues has resulted in a proliferation of research and scholarly publications, as can be evidenced in the catalogs of university presses, as well as programs of recent academic conferences and symposia practically all over the Western world.2 The five books under review attest to this dynamic impulse as they display an array of diverse methodologies used to approach the state of gender relations as represented in the region's theater and performing arts in order not only to analyze it but also to undermine, if possible, the still very active patriarchy. One of the key factors scholars continue to question, deconstruct, and rewrite is women's role in society. Both Margo Milleret's Latin American Women on/in Stages, and Matilde Raquel Holte's Teatro contempordneo judeoargentino: Una perspectiva feminista btblica address this concern from different perspectives. Milleret covers women's entire journey through life as a process, presenting a variegated repertory of roles they have created in response to the wants of an also evolving society as seen "on / in" Latin American stages, while Holte explores the evolution of Jewish Argentine women characters as the social tension escalates between inherited tradition and the need to change.

Milleret approaches her material armed with a sound theoretical structure that includes concepts such as Michael Issacharoff's "mimetic" versus "diegetic" spaces (1981); Judith Butler's concept of gender as performance (1981); Jenijoy LaBelle's notion of the "self" not as "an entity but as an activity, a continual...