(De)constructing Argentine Women: Gender, Nation, and Identity in ‘Alfonsina y el mar’

Abstract

Abstract This article examines gender, nation, and identity in the popular song of folk roots ‘Alfonsina y el mar’. Written by Félix Luna and Ariel Ramírez, the song is based on the suicide of feminist poet Alfonsina Storni and achieved worldwide popularity through Mercedes Sosa's 1969 rendition on the album Mujeres argentinas. Using Butler's theory of gender performance, Cusick's proposals for a feminist music theory, and Plesch's concept of dysphoric topics in Argentine nationalist music, this article deconstructs the song's poetic, musical, and visual discourses to critique its underlying cultural signification. It concludes that by infantilizing, romanticizing, and nationalizing Storni's public figure, her legacy was adapted to the patriarchal expectations of decorum and historical narrative about nation pervasive in Argentina in the late 1960s. Storni's white European urban background was adapted to more ‘authentic’ Argentine values through Sosa's performance and public image.