by Laura G. Gutiérrez

about Laura G. Gutiérrez

Laura G. Gutiérrez is Associate Professor of Latin American and Latina/o Performance Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Performing Mexicanidad: Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage.

Rasquachismo

Rasquachismo, a critical concept in Chicana/o cultural and visual studies, came into academic usage over two decades ago and is used to explicate a resourceful, working-class, neo-baroque aesthetic sensibility present(ed) in the productions of some Chicana/o artists. Within the larger field of Latina/o studies, “rasquachismo” exists alongside a cluster of terms that have been used to describe representational strategies, mass-produced material culture, and ways of relating to and undermining forms of power; these include _chusmería_, _cursi_ or _cursilería_, _choteo_, and _chuchería_, which are used mainly, though not exclusively, in the Caribbean and the Caribbean diaspora. If we continue to expand farther outward, the much-written about concepts of camp and kitsch would be part of this constellation of signifiers that denote a style (or lack thereof) and/or sensibility. In this brief essay I focus on rasquachismo, but relate it to these other keywords since they all function similarly to denote an attitude that can be perceived in material, visual, and performance cultural practices produced by Latinas/os. “Rasquachismo” is derived from the word “rasquache,” a distorted Spanish term from the Nahuatl that connotes anything that lacks style or good taste and indexes—in most contexts beyond academic or artistic circles—the socially scripted practice...