Asexuality and the Woman Writer: Queering a Compliant Castellanos

Abstract

The previous pages have defended the raison d’être for gender studies, albeit in a pessimistic manner, by way of exploring the Sor Juana archetype. A second way to defend the need for gender studies is to look at the historical process of becoming visible as an intellectual in twentieth-century Mexico. Official reception seems to appreciate a reach toward “neutrality” in women’s performance of intellectuality. Official acceptance was the chief and perhaps the only way to be a publicly successful intellectual in twentieth-century Mexico, and under that cultural logic Castellanos’s official success warrants further study. In Mexico City, a context that tends to ignore twentieth-century women who might join official culture, Castellanos has a park named after her and more streets than any other modern woman writer, with the possible exception of Mistral. Sor Juana, of course, wins the female author street count. Still, the Castellanos legend has become “an icon that devours the writer,” according to Carlos Navarrete Cáceres, who lists as evidence a gym, cultural centers, poetry and feminist groups, kindergartens, and a secretarial school all named in her honor. He adds, “Todo ranchero de edad en el rumbo de Comitán dice haberla conocido” (163).