Humoring Resistance: Laughter and the Excessive Body in Contemporary Latin American Women's Fiction (review)

220 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies y los resultados del presente volumen, habrá que seguir con atención la expansión bibliográfica y cultural de esta colección y de las instituciones que la arropan. Carlos Javier GarcÃ-a Arizona State University Humoring Resistance: Laughter and the Excessive Body in Contemporary Latin American Women's Fiction SUNY Press, 2004 By Dianna C. Niebylski One ofthe most important documents in contemporary feminist cultural theory is Hélène Cixous's "The Laugh of the Medusa." In it Qxous develops rhe proposition that an effective écriture feminine is characterized by the in-your face defiant, resistance, indeed, repudiational laughter. Since it is held as a maxim of social grace never to laugh uproariously, a maxim adhered to in particular by a lady, Cixousian laughter is clearly uncivilized and unfeminine, in ways that it becomes necessary for feminism (or queer action) to endorse as a form of deconstructing social norms that regulate—and repress—inconvenient forms of social behavior. One recalls the cartoon in The New Yorker in the early days of feminism, in which a woman is flashed by the prototypic Man in a Raincoat. Rather than reacting in Freudian hysteria, the woman doubles over, laughing and pointing. The five Spanish American authors examined here—unfortunately, not really Latin American, since Brazil is excluded: Patricia Galváo, Clarice Lispector, Hilda Hilst could profitably have been included—are all notable as examples of women writers who have not only used laughter as an instrument of resisting patriarchal feminine civility as a way of challenging the restrictions of civilized behavior as that civility understands them, but who have also used bodily excess as a basis for provoking that laughter. It is an excess grounded in the display of the body—the ridiculization of the masculine norm and the underscoring of what that norm may find repulsive in the female body; the discovery of hitherto unheeded manifestations and use of the female body; the body as a sociopolitical ground; the body as a site of the grotesqueries deriving from historical forces. The five authors showcased, each with an in-depth chapter, are Laura Esquivel, Ana Lydia Vega, Luisa Valenzuela, ArmonÃ-a Sommers and Alicia Borinsky. Certainly one can think of many other candidates for inclusion (I particularly regretted the absence of Mayra Santos Febres and Ana Maria Shua; the latter is mentioned twice in passing). But what is valuable is precisely the decision not to construct a laundry list of the healthy array of possible inclusions, but rather, via the detailed analysis of judiciously chosen texts, to provide a model for work on other pertinent authors. Moreover, Niebylski opens with a solid introduction in which she surveys issues relating to laughter and the body and demonstrates a sensitivity for the need simply not to apply Cixous or American feminist theory uncritically to Latin American texts. There are few limitations to this intelligent study. I have already noted the absence of Brazilians despite the title; one could also suggest Latina writers; and some mention ofthe lesbian body and laughter suggests itself as useful (e.g., the Uruguayan Cristina Peri Rossi or the Colombian AlbalucÃ-a Angel, both mentioned once in passing). One final note: there has been some interest of late in referring in Latin American cultural studies to the Manual de urbanidad (1869, with many, many reprints) by Manuel Antonio Carrefio (died 1874). What he has to say on laughter, merriment, and similar topics is a necessary intertext for any Latin American cultural production on resistant laughter. David William Foster Arizona State University ...