In the Latin American cultural context of the 20th century, the figure of Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957) represents the tensions between
the public and private spheres and the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the assignment of gender roles and their possibility of
transgression. In this article I query the multiple strategies that Gabriela Mistral articulates to negotiate her transgressions to the
normative matrix of sexual difference regarding her emergence as a public writer based on a historically critical reading of the poem The
Dancer, from the “Locas Mujeres” section of the book Lagar (1954). I underscore the implications of performance of a woman such as
herself “appears” or “emerges” as a public writer. This is a poem in which the author textualizes the multiple and paradoxical trajectories
of her discourse regarding the emergence of the female subject in the public sphere. I trace and visibilize how the author´s strategies
involve both the constitution and appearance of voice and body in the public sphere to value the creation of new discursive forms and
spaces not only at an aesthetic, but also ethical and political levels.
Keywords:
performance, aesthetics, public sphere, feminism, Chile, Latin America
Falabella Luco, M. S. (2022). The Ballerina: Discussion of the ethics of sexual difference in a poem by Gabriela Mistral. Nomadías, (31), pp. 209–225. Retrieved from https://revistateoriadelarte.uchile.cl/index.php/NO/article/view/69445