1. Subversive Cultural Silence and Non-Verbal Expression as an Implicit Narrative Strategy:
Theme: Feminist Transgressions - "Social Justice – Self and Citizenship"
By: Cristine de la Luna
NWSA – San Juan, Puerto Rico
November 2014

2. Abstract
I will be applying the theory of subversive cultural silence based on Hȇlȇne Weldt-
Basson’s Subversive Silences (2009) analysis of strategies employed by Latin American/Chicana
Feminists. This case study examines how Artist-writer Alma Lopez,. appropriates subversive
cultural silence and redirects it through chiasmus expression, (a form of verbal patterning ---a
type of antithesis) that is employed through chiastic structure to refute imperialist white
supremacist-capitalistic patriarchy, and its misappropriation of civic discourse. Thus, Lopez
deploys this form of non-verbal communication to dramatically alter authoritative colonial oral
habituation, and invite queer interpretations of the iconic figure La Virgin de Guadalupe. Far
from launching something wholly "new", López's art reimagines (and brings to light) the political
and sexual desire that is veiled in the ubiquitous image of the sorrowful Virgin.
Moreover, it is through analysis of López’s literature and art that a transgressive
standpoint opens perverse and polymorphous spaces for desire and sexuality in Chicana
imaginaries. López's images create a transgressive Chicana feminist - queer iconography. The
performance of subversive cultural silence serves as a method to allow freedom for creative
movement thematically and stylistically in the form of inverted cultural icons, parody and
hyperbole.
My research further examines the manner in which acclaimed artist-author López utilizes
cultural silence to create a feminist perspective in her cyber arte-activism to surmount the
oppressive mechanisms of patriarchy. In particular, Chicano nationalists have been most forceful
in their attempts to silence and suppress her First Amendment rights through artistic expression.
It is through an extended study of her literary and iconic art symbolism that López demonstrates

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circumventions around prejudicial encounters through the performance of subversive cultural
silence.
Analysis
The Use of Language and Silence:
Two elements that reemerge in feminist studies across the wide-ranging disciplines as
social linguistics, social anthropology, and literary criticism are silence and its implicit matching
part, language. An analysis of literary silences is essential, particularly when it is considered as
positioning the reader within a feminist perspective. It is my contention that throughout the 20th
and 21st’ centuries, Latin American/Chicana women writers/artists have adopted the concept of
submissive silence and inverted it to represent a sign of women’s rising to refute the oppressive
mechanics of silence imposed by patriarchy.
In analyzing the narratological and artistic transgressions of artist/author Alma López, the
reader will understand López's "respuesta" to the twenty-first century inquisitors who "racked
and pinioned her constitutional rights as an artist, her identity as a Mexico-born Chicana, and her
integrity as a woman." (Alicia Gaspar de Alba, p.1). López utilizes cultural silence as a strategy
to construct a feminist message through her art and literature work. Additionally, she illustrates
how ethnicity and socio-economic surroundings are echoed in the silences of culture, inverted
icon symbolism, and the poetic use of language through the art of chiasmus.
In an analysis of Helen Weldt-Basson’s theory of Subversive Silence regarding women’s
relationship to language is Shirley Ardener’s: “Perceiving Women” (1975). This volume includes

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two articles by Edwin Ardener where he references “muted-group theory”: “Belief and the
Problem of Women” (1972) “The Problem Revisited” (1975). It is suggested that due to the
historical exclusion of women in the public sphere, public discourse has evolved as a male-
governed instrument. Thus, language mirrors the concerns and necessities of men and
ineffectively expresses distinctive female spheres of experience.
In her introduction Shirley Ardener outlines the following argument:
“…because of the absence of a suitable code and because of a necessary indirectness
rather than spontaneity of expression… Edwin Ardener suggested that women’s ideas or models
of the world around them might nevertheless find a way of expression in forms other than direct
expository speech, possibly through symbolism in art, myth, ritual, special speech registers and
the like.” (S. Ardener 1975, viii-ix)
Moreover, two French feminists of the 1970’s hypothesized that “une écriture feminine”
[a feminine writing] (p.18) and social linguistics of the past 30 years have located evidence to
support women possessing a “distinctive” language than men. Principal proponents of écriture
feminine are Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, and Luce Irigaray. These French feminists identify
Western culture as having methodically oppressed women’s distinct sexuality. Additionally, they
perceive women’s sexuality as the source of their expression.
For Kristeva, language has two facets: “the semiotic, originating from the maternal body
and intimately correlated with nature and the unconscious. The semiotic facet of language makes
itself heard through “rhythmic, intonations, gaps… and other forms of cultural syntactical and
textual disruption. (Roman 1994, 13). For Cixous, women must understand how to utilize the
semiotic aspect of language in order to “write their bodies” (Cixous 1974, 28) as a method of
resistance against phallocentric culture. Weldt-Basson refers to Luce Irigary’s considerations that

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specifically link bodily sensuality to the suppressed female unconscious mind, and views
linguistic eroticism as the primary path to overcome such repression. (Jones 1997, 372 74: and
Roman 1994, 13).
Additionally, Iriguay argues that women are barred from expressing their sexual pleasure
in language since it is forbidden, and hence, must cross “back through the mirror that subtends
all speculations.” (Iriguay 1985, 7). According to Weldt-Basson, “the mirror phase is when the
subject learns to know itself as a reflection of the mother” (Weldt-Basson p.19). This is the stage
prior to separation from the mother/body and assimilation into the male emblematic
(father/language) order.
Though Iriguay does not identify how women are to achieve this crossing back in time, she
voices purposefully about employing silences, and women’s necessity to mirror masculine
discourse in order to challenge it (Iriguay 1985, 75-76). In like manner, critics such as Chicana
feminist Gloria Anzaldúa have emphasized “overcoming the tradition of silence”. In her book
Borderlands/La Frontera - Chapter 5 “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Anzaldúa underscores this
cultural connection of “being robbed of our female being by the masculine plural. Language is a
male discourse.” (Anzaldúa 1987, 76).
Historically, the traditional role of women has been that of absence or silence. Therefore,
the undertaking of a feminist poetics should be that of showing a presence “in the face of erasure
and silence” (Kaminsky 1993, 25). Amy Kaminsky associates silence with repression. She
elaborates upon the fact that several Latin American woman writers use non-verbal expression-
silence as a strategy as well as an indirect narrative technique. This assertion implies the value to

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study this phenomenon further, specifically in the analysis of Alma López's use of cultural silence.
Helene Weldt-Basson terms “cultural silence” because they are specifically linked to a unique,
working-class, Chicana cultural heritage.” (p.195)
“Cultural silence” (Weldt-Basson p.195) is designated to silence that intersects within
class, ethnic and racial distinctions. Such silence is located in López's use of Mexican culture,
and inverted icons. Purposely, the appropriation of “cultural silence” by Lopez reworks and
recontextulizes Chicana/Latina allurement with the La Virgin de Guadalupe. López reimagines a
primordial power of invention, that is, an iconic fantasy that represents a desiring subject. As in
other primeval apparitions that bring into being cultural locations, and stimulate a variety of
desires (sexual, political, and racial), López's literary work and cyber arte converges on Chicana
feminist and queer subject imagination.
López's Our Lady imparts an alternative response to the binately virgin/whore dichotomy.
In particular, López portrays the materiality of the brown body of the Virgin as a site of desire,
conceivably even as temptress, thus encouraging the queer potential of the La Virgin de
Guadalupe. This is made explicit in "Encuentro", depicting the "celestial meeting of La Sirena and
La Virgin de Guadalupe, which illustrates the two in a sexual embrace." (Luz Calvo, p.106)
The "Encuentro" presents three iconic features that recur all through López's work: La
Virgen, La Sirena (the mermaid), and La Mariposa (the viceroy butterfly---an orange butterfly
with black marking) are recurring motifs in López's images. Lopez clarifies: "...For me, the
Viceroy mirrors parallel and intersecting histories of being different or 'other' even within our own
communities. Racist attitudes see us Latino/as criminals as an economic burden, and families may

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see us as perverted or deviant...in essence we are very vulnerable similar to Viceroy butterflies,
just trying to live and survive" (p. 107). In Our Lady, the site of the bare-breasted, pierced Chicana
overlaying on the Viceroy butterfly sustains the symbolism of the butterfly with the queer Chicana
subject.
More to the point, López employs metaphoric language and images to signify Chicana
subjectivity and embodiment. Also, López's artistic practice as subaltern positions her with a
specialized cultural knowledge to engender a distinct class of viewing satisfaction, for those who
"get it." As an example, linguistic associations along a paradigmatic axis suggests queerness.
Chicana feminist Luz Calvo elaborates: "mariposa (butterfly) is connected to the words
"marimacha (dyke) and "maricon" (fag) through the prefix "mari" (and the prefix is etymologically
linked back to María, the Virgin Mary)" (p.110). For this reason, a queer interpretation is
hypothesized due to the combination of two womanly forms in an imagined sexual relationship.
As we undertake a closer examination of Alma López's work in relation to chiasmus, a
trope structured by twists in the meaning of words, phrases or images--- in this particular case,
López's Our Lady twists the association of the Virgin, ushering her in a new direction. Feminist
Author Luz Calvo explains: that by rearranging an original phrase, the artist, author, and activist
"radically disrupts previously stable visions of reality... Chiasmus, allows us to view reality in a
new light; we create a new way of seeing and hopefully a new way of being in the world"
(p.115). As in the Chicano/a slogan "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us," or the
Queer Nation slogan "You say don't fuck, we say fuck you." Chiasmus is an ideal trope for
radical (cultural) feminists---through its repetition and reversal.

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In conclusion, when decoding López's artistic reimagining's of the Virgin of Guadalupe,
it is apparent that the Chicano/a desire for an embodied brown-skinned Guadalupe is shaped by
the social and historical institutionalization of racial hierarchies, resulting from the enduring
racial legacies of colonization. Conversely, the imagined collective adherence to a sexless brown
matriarchal figure has come at significant cost: women's active sexuality. Therefore, the cultural
work of López broadens Chicano/a collective imaginaries, altering the terms by which Chicana
subjects perceive themselves, desire others, and participate on the social world stage.

9. Bibliography
1. Helen Carol Weldt-Basson, “Subversive Silences”: Nonverbal Expression and Implicit
Narrative Strategies in the works of Latin American Women Writers (Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 2009
2. Gaspar de Alba and López, Our Lady of Controversy: Alma López' Irreverent Apparition
(University of Texas Press, Austin, 2001)
3. Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera – The New Mestiza (Aunt Luke Books, San
Francisco, 2007)