UCLA Center for the Study of Women

For this presentation, I want to focus onone of FOMMA’s central missions: to stage how embodied gender dynamics in performance play a role in promoting a collective intersectional identity. Specifically, I will investigate Reflejo de la Diosa Luna’s “Migración” (1996) to underscore that identity is not only performed but also choreographed and gendered. Particularly, I am focusing on the shared, though distinctive, experience of intersectionality among indigenous women in Mexico. The term “intersectionality,” is borrowed from Kimberle Crenshaw’s theory of intersectionality in which she questions the ways that experiences of Black women are excluded because feminism presumes whiteness and blackness assumes masculinity. In this case, I would add that studies of indigeneity most often elide the issues of gender that oppress indigenous women. This presentation will focus on two performance strategies aimed at critiquing gendered indigenous roles for women: cross-dressing and a materialist use of objects. I argue that the forms of cross-dressing employed and the ways performers cite or use objects define their body techniques and forms of identification. I argue that the performer modifies her body movements depending on the character she plays and the contextual factors of the performance. She uses objects to situate the body and the scene. In doing so, the performer provides alternative options for gendered representations, which in turn influence representations of indigeneity.