Fetishism as Theatrical Device in Nelson Rodrigues's Os Sete Gatinhos

  • Isadora Grevan de Carvalho Rutgers University-Newark
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21471/jls.v1i2.108
Keywords: Brazilian theater, modernism, psychoanalysis, masquerade, Gilberto Freyre

Abstract

In this essay, I examine the concept of fetish and how it manifests itself as Brazilian social structures in the theater of Nelson Rodrigues. I offer a particularly detailed study of fetish in Rodrigues’s Os Sete Gatinhos. Here fetish serves to illuminate gender relations and the patriarchal family as a cultural myth to be deconstructed, as well as working to reveal the connections between space, bodies, performativity, and power in Brazilian society.

Author Biography

Isadora Grevan de Carvalho, Rutgers University-Newark

Isadora Grevan de Carvalho is an Assistant Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at Rutgers University-Newark. Her research focuses on Brazilian theater and questions of marginalization and fetishism in Brazilian and Luso-African literature and culture. As a Fulbright scholar, Isadora is currently doing research for her second book manuscript, Performance of Fetishism and Marginality in Modern Brazilian Theater.

Published
2016-11-27
Issue
Vol 1 No 2 (2016): Special Dossier Honoring Russell Hamilton
Section
Articles

Copyright (c) 2016 Isadora Grevan de Carvalho

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