Gendering “Superintendenta”

Abstract This paper examines the struggles over naming a new gendered subjectivity in institutions and public discourse. It analyzes the indexical contestations regarding the naming of the first woman to lead the oldest colonial institution in Puerto Rico, the Police Department. Even though the Governor fulfilled the appropriate conditions when performing the ritual of naming Michelle Hernández as the first female “superintendente” ([common gender] superintendent) of the Police, the local press made conjectures about her new title and introduced the indexical variant “superintendenta” ([feminine] superintendent), a non-standard form that produced an indexical collision among Puerto Ricans on social media ( Eckert, 2008 ; Barret & Hall, 2024 ). Adapting the methods of discourse-centered online ethnography to publicly available discourse, this paper contributes to understanding that individuals do not only evaluate the felicity conditions of rituals ( Austin, 1962 ; Silverstein, 2023 ). They also pay attention to the scope of their transformational and indexical effects ( Turner, 1969 ; Grimes, 2000 ; Tavárez, 2024 ). Furthermore, it argues that the crafting of a new gendered subjectivity in the Puerto Rican public sphere, which I call gendercraft , depended on both the state’s anticipation of indexical disalignments and the subsequent arresting of indexical variation, which prevented the unsettling of semiotic and contextual orders.