Transvestite Prostitution in Latin American Chronicle: Literary Studies and Pathosformeln

Abstract

This paper offers a proposal of a practical application of the concept of Pathosformeln coined by the German art historian Aby Warburg, in the field of literary studies, establishing a communicating vessel from the representative and visual images studied by this scholar to the mental images originated in the descriptions of a literary text, and the emotions they convey. For this, a varied corpus of eight Latin American chronicles is chosen, from modernists to the 21st century, whose theme is transvestite prostitution, then limiting the example of application to the exacerbation of femininity of the protagonists, and the point of view of the narrators in this regard, supported in turn by Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity. Through textual quotes and comparison between the representations of the transvestite prostitute in these nonfiction texts, the applicability of the concept is discussed, as well as the differences with its widely studied use in the historiography of visual arts.