| This dissertation explores Puerto Rican subjectivity through three iconic figures who have challenged U.S. foreign policies by subjecting their bodies to injury and the threat of death. Each chapter underscores one figure: Pedro Albizu Campos, a revolutionary leader and esteemed orator; Dolores "Lolita" Lebron Sotomayor, a feminist revolutionary leader and poet; and Papo Colo, a New York-based conceptual artist.;Under the lenses of performance studies, critical policy studies, and phenomenology, I examine these figures' iconic performances of bodily endurance as pursuits of Ricanness, a concept developed and explored to describe how the Puerto Rican colonial subject must endure his/her time as a "perceived incomplete being" within the confines of the other's temporality. I argue that these bodily endurance practices are always done in reaction to policy's quick changing hand, highlighting how it means to be Rican within the parameters of the United States, and how Rican bodies endure and respond to policies within institutional sites.;In chapter one, I analyze El Grito de Lares, a speech given by Albizu Campos in 1950, before the implementation of the Commonwealth status of the island in 1952. I argue that his bodily performance is expressed in his linguistic reproduction of the 1868 El Grito de Lares revolt for the purposes of overturning the performativity of U.S. foreign policies.;In chapter two, I analyze Dolores "Lolita" Lebron Sotomayor's "assault" against Congress from the Capitol visitor gallery in 1954. I argue that her bodily endurance is evidenced in her desire to die and eventual failed performance of death for the independence of Puerto Rico. I also argue that as the all-sacrificing mother for the nation and femme fatale, she disturbs traditional gender roles.;In chapter three, I argue that Papo Colo's 1977 performance Superman 51 is a bodily endurance act of exhaustion by a Puerto Rican colonial subject responding to Puerto Rico as the potential 51st state. I also analyze this piece within El Museo del Barrio's 2008 exhibition Arte ≠ Vida to highlight the space's evolution from a traditional Puerto Rican museum to a more Latin American one. |
