James Donald, following Michael de Certeau's description of New York city's landscape in The Prac... more James Donald, following Michael de Certeau's description of New York city's landscape in The Practice of Everyday Life, states that the city that people experience produces "an 'anthropological,' poetic and mythic experience of space," and later he adds: "In the recesses and margins of urban space, people invest places with meaning, memory and desire." n1 When the city is transferred to the border, however, film representation, meaning and memory become part of a distorted reality, a landscape filled with images related to fear, hybrid identities, and sexual and racial tension. n2 In fact, the space in between nations and cultures is usually recreated as a war zone; and its city becomes the place in which a dehumanized and distorted configuration of identity raises both sides' respective national fears. Why the hysteria and intense fascination with the space of the border? How does legal discourse participate since the 1940s in the arts and entertainment industry?
In his posthumously published novel 2666 ,Bolafio addresses the consequences of economic neoliber... more In his posthumously published novel 2666 ,Bolafio addresses the consequences of economic neoliberalism in the U.S.-Mexico border through the fictional city of Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa represents Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the location of over 500 femicides between 1993 and 2008 and a place named both the "murder capital of the world" and a "model of globalization." Santa Teresa is at the core of the novel's conception of evil. This paper analyzes the influences of Charles Baudelaire and Marquis de Sade in Bolafio's representation of Santa Teresa. This paper also argues that, rather than ending the novel with a solution, Bolafio's decision to leave only the mystery at the end shocks readers into reconsidering their complicity and mass participation in the new landscape of globalization, framed at the beginning of the novel by the words of Baudelaire as "un oasis de horror en medio de un desierto de aburrimiento."
Reden Revista Espanola De Estudios Norteamericanos, 2001
This article presents the Chicano family as a symbolic space where Chicano cultural and linguisti... more This article presents the Chicano family as a symbolic space where Chicano cultural and linguistic issues are confronted, allowing for the revision of the roots of traditional culture and offering new altematives. The article focuses on two of the early Chicano writers, Jose Antonio Villarreal and his novel Pocho (1959) and Luis Valdez with his play The Shrunken Head 01 Pancho Villa (1964). The former narrates the dilemma of choosing tradition, as
Los números correspondientes a la primavera y otoño de 1987 de la revista Ideologies & Literature... more Los números correspondientes a la primavera y otoño de 1987 de la revista Ideologies & Literature ofrecen un compendio de artículos que, en la misma línea de calidad de siempre, presentan una perspectiva abierta a los temas sociales y filosóficos del mundo crítico literario luso-hispánico. El ejemplar que corresponde a otoño cuenta con un artículo que sintetiza muchos de los problemas a los que se enfrenta la teoría literaria tras la destrucción del concepto de historia, discurso y significado. En el artículo "El expresionismo: hacia una relectura de las vanguardias", Vicente Sánchez-Biosca ofrece algunos datos interesantes sobre la naturaleza de esta polémica, llevada a cabo en los años 1937 y 1938 en la re
Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, 2016
In this chapter, I address the subsequent deconstruction of heteropatriarchy by feminist thought ... more In this chapter, I address the subsequent deconstruction of heteropatriarchy by feminist thought and its cultural manifestos. Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera and Ana Castillo’s The Massacre of the Dreamers recreate new systems of self-representation during the 1980s and 1990s, and transform social activism through their feminist and queer vision of the new mestiza and the Xicanista approach. Chicana feminists, by proposing a disrupted wholeness or the total Self, produce the image of a rotating wheel of interconnecting opposites—a fractured identity always transforming, and a rejection of “tradition” as a static Mexican-Americanness. Chicana feminist thought connects images of wholeness to a healing, interconnecting sense of representation that allows them to transcend narrow understandings of self and culture.
Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, 2016
In this chapter, I discuss representations of “Mexican-Americanness” in the USA. I compare theori... more In this chapter, I discuss representations of “Mexican-Americanness” in the USA. I compare theories of mexicanidad and identity written during the Mexican Revolution with the Mexican-Americanness recreated by Chicana/o autobiographies. These works depict the Mexican-American experience as a space in between and across cultures, but they also place the struggle for culture (as an “unfamiliar” element) within the definition of family itself.
This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within a hemispheric perspec... more This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives from Latin America. Books in the series will highlight work that explores concerns in literature in different cultural contexts across historical and geographical boundaries and will also include work on the specifi c Latina/o realities in the US. Designed to explore key questions confronting contemporary issues of literary and cultural import, Literatures of the Americas will be rooted in traditional approaches to literary criticism but will seek to include cutting edge theoretical interventions such as postcolonial and feminist critical approaches.
Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, 2016
In this chapter, the “unfamiliar” ambiguity of the pocho is addressed through the pocha’s gaze in... more In this chapter, the “unfamiliar” ambiguity of the pocho is addressed through the pocha’s gaze in Lourdes Portillo’s La Ofrenda and The Devil Never Sleeps. In her cinema, cross-border communities are seen as integral to the rewriting of Mexican-Americanness and offer her crossings as a way of recreating a new familia. Lourdes Portillo brings together self-representation, media, and the wholistic response of Chicana artists to previous versions of family, home, and “evil” imposed on crossings into the USA. Cherrie Moraga’s Loving in the War Years and Waiting in the Wings rewrite the “unfamiliar” as oppressive traditions of heteropatriarchy. Her works address the making of familia from scratch, its crossings, and the stereotypes that criminalize that which is outside the norm.
James Donald, following Michael de Certeau's description of New York city's landscape in The Prac... more James Donald, following Michael de Certeau's description of New York city's landscape in The Practice of Everyday Life, states that the city that people experience produces "an 'anthropological,' poetic and mythic experience of space," and later he adds: "In the recesses and margins of urban space, people invest places with meaning, memory and desire." n1 When the city is transferred to the border, however, film representation, meaning and memory become part of a distorted reality, a landscape filled with images related to fear, hybrid identities, and sexual and racial tension. n2 In fact, the space in between nations and cultures is usually recreated as a war zone; and its city becomes the place in which a dehumanized and distorted configuration of identity raises both sides' respective national fears. Why the hysteria and intense fascination with the space of the border? How does legal discourse participate since the 1940s in the arts and entertainment industry?
In his posthumously published novel 2666 ,Bolafio addresses the consequences of economic neoliber... more In his posthumously published novel 2666 ,Bolafio addresses the consequences of economic neoliberalism in the U.S.-Mexico border through the fictional city of Santa Teresa. Santa Teresa represents Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the location of over 500 femicides between 1993 and 2008 and a place named both the "murder capital of the world" and a "model of globalization." Santa Teresa is at the core of the novel's conception of evil. This paper analyzes the influences of Charles Baudelaire and Marquis de Sade in Bolafio's representation of Santa Teresa. This paper also argues that, rather than ending the novel with a solution, Bolafio's decision to leave only the mystery at the end shocks readers into reconsidering their complicity and mass participation in the new landscape of globalization, framed at the beginning of the novel by the words of Baudelaire as "un oasis de horror en medio de un desierto de aburrimiento."
Reden Revista Espanola De Estudios Norteamericanos, 2001
This article presents the Chicano family as a symbolic space where Chicano cultural and linguisti... more This article presents the Chicano family as a symbolic space where Chicano cultural and linguistic issues are confronted, allowing for the revision of the roots of traditional culture and offering new altematives. The article focuses on two of the early Chicano writers, Jose Antonio Villarreal and his novel Pocho (1959) and Luis Valdez with his play The Shrunken Head 01 Pancho Villa (1964). The former narrates the dilemma of choosing tradition, as
Los números correspondientes a la primavera y otoño de 1987 de la revista Ideologies & Literature... more Los números correspondientes a la primavera y otoño de 1987 de la revista Ideologies & Literature ofrecen un compendio de artículos que, en la misma línea de calidad de siempre, presentan una perspectiva abierta a los temas sociales y filosóficos del mundo crítico literario luso-hispánico. El ejemplar que corresponde a otoño cuenta con un artículo que sintetiza muchos de los problemas a los que se enfrenta la teoría literaria tras la destrucción del concepto de historia, discurso y significado. En el artículo "El expresionismo: hacia una relectura de las vanguardias", Vicente Sánchez-Biosca ofrece algunos datos interesantes sobre la naturaleza de esta polémica, llevada a cabo en los años 1937 y 1938 en la re
Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, 2016
In this chapter, I address the subsequent deconstruction of heteropatriarchy by feminist thought ... more In this chapter, I address the subsequent deconstruction of heteropatriarchy by feminist thought and its cultural manifestos. Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/La Frontera and Ana Castillo’s The Massacre of the Dreamers recreate new systems of self-representation during the 1980s and 1990s, and transform social activism through their feminist and queer vision of the new mestiza and the Xicanista approach. Chicana feminists, by proposing a disrupted wholeness or the total Self, produce the image of a rotating wheel of interconnecting opposites—a fractured identity always transforming, and a rejection of “tradition” as a static Mexican-Americanness. Chicana feminist thought connects images of wholeness to a healing, interconnecting sense of representation that allows them to transcend narrow understandings of self and culture.
Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, 2016
In this chapter, I discuss representations of “Mexican-Americanness” in the USA. I compare theori... more In this chapter, I discuss representations of “Mexican-Americanness” in the USA. I compare theories of mexicanidad and identity written during the Mexican Revolution with the Mexican-Americanness recreated by Chicana/o autobiographies. These works depict the Mexican-American experience as a space in between and across cultures, but they also place the struggle for culture (as an “unfamiliar” element) within the definition of family itself.
This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within a hemispheric perspec... more This series seeks to bring forth contemporary critical interventions within a hemispheric perspective, with an emphasis on perspectives from Latin America. Books in the series will highlight work that explores concerns in literature in different cultural contexts across historical and geographical boundaries and will also include work on the specifi c Latina/o realities in the US. Designed to explore key questions confronting contemporary issues of literary and cultural import, Literatures of the Americas will be rooted in traditional approaches to literary criticism but will seek to include cutting edge theoretical interventions such as postcolonial and feminist critical approaches.
Collective Identity and Cultural Resistance in Contemporary Chicana/o Autobiography, 2016
In this chapter, the “unfamiliar” ambiguity of the pocho is addressed through the pocha’s gaze in... more In this chapter, the “unfamiliar” ambiguity of the pocho is addressed through the pocha’s gaze in Lourdes Portillo’s La Ofrenda and The Devil Never Sleeps. In her cinema, cross-border communities are seen as integral to the rewriting of Mexican-Americanness and offer her crossings as a way of recreating a new familia. Lourdes Portillo brings together self-representation, media, and the wholistic response of Chicana artists to previous versions of family, home, and “evil” imposed on crossings into the USA. Cherrie Moraga’s Loving in the War Years and Waiting in the Wings rewrite the “unfamiliar” as oppressive traditions of heteropatriarchy. Her works address the making of familia from scratch, its crossings, and the stereotypes that criminalize that which is outside the norm.
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