Anti-Structure and Decompose：The Multiple Genders of Queer Tango in Buenos Aires
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Cheng, Yueh
Abstract
Tango Dancing, as an important part of cultural elements in Argentina, is originated from Buenos Aires at the end of 19 century. Surveying the history of tango dancing, we could get the picture of modern political and historical development at Argentina. In 1983, after the military dictatorship had collapsed and democratic elections were held, the expectations of lesbian and gay movement had grown. In 1990s, at the same time when many activists and communities flourished, LGBTQ who were interested in tango gradually had their milonga from private meeting to public sphere, which was the forerunner of queer tango, called “gay milonga”.
The most important difference from queer tango and traditional tango is that we could change roles between leader and follower freely when dancing tango. This thesis considers the queer tango and festival of Buenos Aires as the ritual process, inspired by the theory of gender performativity from Butler, and discusses how gender and sexuality are transformed, floated and reformulated between the structure and anti-structure. The author finds out, the agency from the anti-structure of queer tango could decompose the social structure.
Otherwise, against the patriarchy and heterosexual hegemony, differing from the fixed binary opposition in traditional tango, queer tango offers a kind of dance which is more equal and allows tanguero/a to discover more possibilities of multiple gender practices in tango dancing. Queer tango not only offers LGBTQ milonga for tango dancing, but also allows men-women to realize the gender performativity from being leader or follower, which could improve the sensibility between traditional tango dancers.
Subjects
queer tango
performativity
ritual process
anti-structure
decompose
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
ntu-101-R95125001-1.pdf
Size
23.54 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum
(MD5):0fd8d2ed1f0ad965f6249246e4a47e79