Abstract: Ours is a Hardcore Copla: The Transgressive Articulation of Revisionary Mythopoesis in La Shicas Supercopleras This study investigates the

diachronic semiotics of national gender through the neoflamenco artist Elsa Rovayo, also known as La Shica. Rovayo was born in Ceuta in 1976 and moved to Madrid to study flamenco dance in 2004. Rovayo left the tablao scene in 2004 and reinvented herself as the indie-copla-hip hop flamenca, La Shica. The focus of this presentation will be La Shicas transgressive articulation of revisionary mythopoesis in her song Supercopleras. In Supercopleras La Shica sings about three disgraced female icons from copla and pasodoble songs written by male authors in the 1930s and 40s: La bien pag, la zarzamora, and la lirio. Supercopleras re-envisions the same protagonists today as a collective of strong, independent women--la zarzamora and la lirio as lovers. Supercopleras is rich with a cultural semiotic referencing both the Spanish and the Andalusian, the traditional and the vanguard, the highbrow and the lowbrow, the local and the global, the copla and the hardcop (a hybrid word combing two musical genres, hardcore and copla). I inform this investigation with insights from Rachel DuPlessiss Writing beyond the Ending (1985), William Washabaughs Flamenco: Passion, Politics, and Popular Culture (1996), and Judith Butlers Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990). As La Shica writes beyond the ending of the traditional copla and pasodoble heroine, she is following in the footsteps of a long tradition of subversive female authors who, unsatisfied with the way in which their foremothers have been depicted by male authors, have engaged themselves with the task of rewriting their genders fictional representation. Through Supercopleras, La Shica employs the tactic DuPlessis refers to as narrative delegitimation, abrogating the traditional dichotomous Spanish Catholic imaginary of woman within the confines of the Mary Magdalene archetype (as whore) or Mother Mary archetype (as virtuous virgin and martyr) which the majority of these female copla protagonists have long represented. Keywords: Copla (Dura), Narrative Delegitimation, Hybridity Michael Arnold University of Minnesota, Twin Cities 2421 Kraft Street 55075 South St. Paul, Minnesota USA Arno0055@umn.edu