Becoming-[Spider] Woman: Webs of Transformation in Kiss of the Spider Woman

• In Event: Recasting the Latina Body: Text, Performance, and Audience

Abstract

This essay applies Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s concept of becoming-woman to Manuel Puig’s novel Kiss of the Spider Woman. It examines how postmodern theory and Latin American literature can create change by challenging the prevailing notions of the stable, gendered body. Becoming-woman dismantles traditional understandings of sexuality and gender; it creates a larger scope of expressions that enable the existing hegemonic social order to be challenged through literary, theoretical, and discursive tactics.

Author

• Tiara Naputi, University of Texas, Austin