The Interaction between the Concepts of Cultural Consumption, Gender Performativity and Posthumanism in Manuel Puig’s Narrative Ouvre: The Construction of a Posthuman Body

In this thesis I will approach Manuel Puig’s narrative work from the interaction between the concepts of consumo cultural (cultural consumption), gender performativity and posthumanism. With this methodology in mind, I propose to demonstrate that in Puig’s narrative, some characters construct a posthuman identity that challenges -intentionally or not- the dominant heteropatriarchal discourse that imposes the representation of gender in a binary and highly stereotyped way. These representations of gender are promoted -especially- through homogeneous and homogenising cultural discourses. In order to construct these posthuman identities, that is, identities that transcend the concept of what is considered “human” in the West, the characters turn to certain cultural products promoted by the dominant cultures, that is, by European and American cultures. Therefore, when these characters perform their process of cultural consumption they adopt certain cultural goods (movies, tangos, boleros, science fiction movies, melodramas) in a non-homogeneous way, that is, in a way that disagrees with the expectations of consumption and reception (and decoding) of the dominant cultures. In this sense, the core values that the dominant culture seek to impose by promoting these products (one of these values being that of sexual normativisation) are subverted. The posthuman identities embodied by these characters challenge the very essence of heteropatriarchal binarism and open the door to think of dissident forms of embodiment that oppose heteropatriarchal authoritarianism over bodies.