Dramaturgy, Citizenship, and Queerness

Abstract

Contemporary Mexican cabaret is an art genre akin to theater and based in part on the popular tent theater (Teatro de Carpa) of the 1920s and 1930s. It is profoundly connected to the exercise of critical citizenship vis-à-vis Mexican neoliberalism. Many of its artists are part of a deviation from the sexual norm in that they challenge the predominant conceptions of gender and sexuality in national discourse. The fact that cabaret attracts an audience beyond purely commercial entertainment can be interpreted in terms of Slavoj Ž iž ek’s proposal that the organic symbolic links created by communities are gradually being eliminated in favor a single form of relationship, the economic one. Mexican cabaret calls into question nationalistic collective models and proposes alternatives to the uniform cultural production of subjectivities and sexualities. In doing so it calls attention to the fragmentation and multiplicity of Mexican reality and especially to the need for nondogmatic and queer perceptions of it.