Superpowers in the Bedroom: The Brothel Image in 1960s Latin America

Authors

  • Jill Kuhnheim University of Kansas

Keywords:

Latin American novel, Boom, Sexuality, Prostitution

Abstract

In the mid-1960s three novels published within a year of one another in different Spanish American countries all had the brothel as their central image. An ambiguous image, the brothel owes its prominence at this moment to a polysemous quality allowing it to "contain" contradictory meanings.   The house of prostitution has a paradoxical status; marginal to the dominant order, it is attractive, repellant, Other. The prostíbulo openly associates sexual, symbolic, and economic practices. Existing on the margins of society, it is a pseudo-forbidden territory for men that has become institutionalized as a consequence of its very prohibition. For women, the brothel might represent one of the few semi-sanctioned sites for the expression of female sexuality outside of marriage; it offers poor women an opportunity to participate in the service labor market but its social illegitimacy leaves these workers especially vulnerable to exploitation.

Author Biography

Jill Kuhnheim, University of Kansas

Jill S. Kuhnheim is professor at the Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas; currently is a Visiting Professor at Brown University. Her areas of research and teaching include contemporary Spanish American poetry, gender, and cultural studies and she has new projects in process that deal with how US American literature dialogues with or interprets Latin America. She received her B.A. from Reed College in Portland, Oregon and her Ph.D. in Spanish American Literature from the University of California, San Diego. Before joining the faculty at KU she taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1990-2000), and has been a Visiting Professor at University of Kentucky and Miami University of Ohio.
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Published

2016-02-06

How to Cite

Kuhnheim, J. (2016). Superpowers in the Bedroom: The Brothel Image in 1960s Latin America. A Contracorriente: Una Revista De Estudios Latinoamericanos, 13(2), 20–36. Retrieved from https://acontracorriente.chass.ncsu.edu/index.php/acontracorriente/article/view/1439

Issue

Vol. 13 No. 2 (2016): Winter 2016

Section

Articles / Artículos

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