(DOWNLOAD) "Consuming Mother in Diana Raznovich's Casa Matriz." by Romance Notes # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Consuming Mother in Diana Raznovich's Casa Matriz.
- Author : Romance Notes
- Release Date : January 22, 2009
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 180 KB
Description
CONSUMERISM and the daughter-mother relationship in Diana Raznovich's Casa Matriz (1981) has been the subject of recent comment. Nora Glickman describes Casa Matriz as a parody of the consumption of feelings. From her perspective the idea of being able to purchase a different mother evokes the very common daughter-mother relationship in which "nadie tenia la hija que deseaba, ni la madre que hubiera querido tener" (95).1 For Catherine Larson, Raznovich's satiric perspective of consumerism supports the gender stereotyping in the work. Larson suggests that the substitute mother in Casa Matriz serves as the "master copy" for all Hispanic mothers (113). In his brief study, David William Foster identifies one of these maternal copies as the "perfect mother," who persists under the "oppressive weight of hegemonic definitions of motherhood" (51). For Diana Taylor, Raznovich's humor defies censorship, gender violence, and political limitations by employing stereotypes that reflect consumer and patriarchal constructs in Latin America. Taylor maintains that Raznovich presents her criticism by opposing the ideas of "real" and "substitute." In her chapter Taylor explains how "the 'real' is produced through the capitalist market system that trades in desires and emotions. Rather than allowing us to buy into the seemingly natural mother/daughter experience, to idealize it or psychologize it, Raznovich leaves all the performative strings showing" (85). As all these scholars confirm, Raznovich uses consumerism as a structural device to frame her critique of patriarchy and the notion of female gender identity as a construct: what current research leaves unaddressed is a detailed study of the mother economy in Casa Matriz. The following paper seeks to understand the mechanics of consumer behavior that underscores Raznovich's criticism, and argues that the role of mother portrays a reified commodity whose purchase and consumption parallels the performative acts of gender identity construction. In Casa Matriz Raznovich links two seemingly contrary theories: consumerism and gender identity. Society's power to objectify the subject links these two ideas. Jean Baudrillard interprets the social function of consumer and object production. The purchaser, according to Baudrillard, maintains a reciprocal relationship with the object of consumption: in modern, capitalist societies consumers, markets, and objects shape and design each other (64). The same holds true for gender identity. Judith Butler explains gender as a set of performative acts regulated by hegemonic powers. Performative in this case means, "constituting the identity it is purported to be" (33). In both instances the fundamentals of society at the Casa Matriz - be it the consumer or woman - reify the subject who participates in the very mechanism of objectification.