Dissertation
QUEER CHISME: TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICAL PRACTICES OF MEXICAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
01/2017
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/117074
Abstract
“Queer Chisme” maps out a genealogy of chisme to capture the ways culture, socio-historical context, and social relations are intrinsically linked to global capital. By examining the function of chisme, which I define as a homosocial practice of bonding that transports information through informal networks outside authority, I explore the creative, erotic forms of power undocumented Mexican women use to resist oppression in the domestic labor industry. I incorporate a political economic framework to explore the ways Mexican women are disciplined by the global economy, U.S. immigration law, and heteronormativity to participate in a racialized institution of kinship and family. Combining a political economic analysis, a literary reading, ethnography, and oral history, I illustrate the potentiality of homosocial erotic power in the racialized economies of work and pleasure. My project also exposes the slippages of state-sanctioned emotional security by theorizing the ways chisme deploys its own performative erotic power within global capitalism. To do so, I examine the domestic industry and the transnational processes that influence and are influenced by Mexican immigrant women who navigate the shifts of globalized economies and confront the consequent feminization of labor. The overall goal of the project is to illuminate Mexican immigrant women’s discourses like that of chisme as feminist practices of resistance and survival in today’s global economy.
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Details
- Title
- QUEER CHISME: TRANSFORMATIVE POLITICAL PRACTICES OF MEXICAN IMMIGRANT WOMEN IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY
- Creators
- Lizeth Gutierrez
- Contributors
- Linda Heidenreich (Advisor)Nishant Shahani (Advisor)Luz Maria Gordillo (Committee Member)Pamela Thoma (Committee Member)Irene Mata (Committee Member)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Languages, Cultures, and Race, School of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 167
- Identifiers
- 99900581628901842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation