Tenth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This article explores through an interactive publication in digital media the uses of the concepts of intertextuality and performativity as tools to break gender stereotypes transmitted during early childhood. In this way, the construction of gender is assumed as a gradual process that, through education and other cultural mechanisms, results in social construction. This process is questioned through the work of post-structuralist philosophers and from examples taken from pre-Hispanic cultures, specifically Mesoamerican that at the time raised the notion of non-binary gender. The game is a starting point as an everyday activity that adds more nuances to the definition of gender roles. The performative and the intertextual are proposed as tools that critical theory offers to design to help it face stereotypical constructions of gender. This involves questioning the role of design as an agent of capitalism and its effectiveness in silently but effectively prolonging stereotypical conceptions of gender through products for children. Intertextuality is proposed as a tool to break gender stereotypes which are exemplified through the publication “Primer día de clase” that through poetry, seeks to subvert the construction of gender in early childhood, towards a more egalitarian and wider notion of gender.