Shane Greene
sgreene@indiana.edu
Indiana University, USA
Abstract:
This paper develops some theory about feminist punk politics as emerged in Lima during the tense period of political violence Peru was immersed in the 80s. While Sendero Luminoso Maoist revolutionaries in Peru were ideologically encouraging young wome to play as armed militants, a punk artist in Lima was developing another model of radical feminist practice based on expressive forms of prohibited sexuality. Under the stage name of María T-Ta, she figured out how to make an impact on the conservative gender and sex behavior codes by calling public attention to the politics involved in the pleasure of fucking. As a result, she also found significant hindrances —within punk movement and outside, refracted through other social viewpoints on class, geography and race. Even though this paper accounts for a particular historical context, it helps at the end to elicit a theoretical dialogue framed in two forms of expressive conceptualization: a) the long history of provoking feminists in punk (e.g. Lydia Lunch, Siouxsie Sioux, The Slits, Riot Grrrls, and more recently Pussy Riot) where María T-Ta can be situated, and b) contemporary debates surrounding queer theory, post-pornography and the third wave of feminism (particularly Beatriz Preciado’s work).
Keywords: punk, violence, queer theory, feminism, Peru.
