Subversions of Selfhood: Transgressive CharACTerS of the Neobaroque

This chapter begins by contextualizing the literary works and their authors with an overview of their historical and literary backgrounds. A history of hybridization in the Americas has led to the emergence of (neo)baroque literary and artistic genres that adapt their forms to cultural heterogeneity and nomadism. This brief introduction (Sect. 3.1) is followed by Sect. 3.2 with a detailed description of ambiguous, category-bending characters that appear in the fictional, critical, performative, and artistic works of the Neobaroque. They exemplify different modes of transgression and borderland identities that we contemplate in the light of neobaroque stylistic and narrative techniques used in their representation. A common feature of the works selected in this study is the presence of subversively eccentric characters, voices, and performers. Their recurrence indicates unstable and hybrid contexts that are fertile grounds for articulating a model of trans-selfhood. The common stylistic features and techniques of these works are pointed out as transformative devices in the decentering of identity. Nomadic subjects are presented according to the modes of their transgression: cross-dressing, androgyny, queer ambiguity, metamorphosis, posthumanity, and borderland transit. The objective of this chapter is to explain how these works exemplify cultural transitivity and lead to conceiving a nomadic trans-self by means of neobaroque discursive devices.