Bananas and other fruits of desire: Divas and subversions in the performance of ney matogrosso

Taking into account the symbolic universe of the civic-military dictatorships of the Southern Cone as a context, this article seeks to reflect on the aesthetic and political implications of the figuration of the diva in the performance of local artists, through the case of Ney Matogrosso (1941) and his reappropriations of Carmen Miranda (1909-1955). From a feminist theoretical orientation in a postcolonial key, it is possible to suspect that the figuration of the diva is strategically infiltrated in its performance, from a network of aesthetic superposition that aim to destabilize the dominant symbolic order, rendering porous the boundaries between masculine and feminine, the political and the spectacular. The relevance of this study lies not only in the attempt to shed light on this “parody tinsel gesture” (Castillo 92) from its possible aesthetic effects, but also to contribute to the unexplored field of its (micro) political implications in the Latin American context.