decolonial voices. chicana and chicano cultural studies in the 21st centuryby arturo j. aldama;...

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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Decolonial Voices. Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century by Arturo J. Aldama; Naomi H. Quiñónez Review by: Chuck Tatum Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 7 (2003), pp. 309-311 Published by: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20641688 . Accessed: 13/06/2014 05:33 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies and Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Arizona are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 05:33:09 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

Decolonial Voices. Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century by Arturo J.Aldama; Naomi H. QuiñónezReview by: Chuck TatumArizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, Vol. 7 (2003), pp. 309-311Published by: Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20641688 .

Accessed: 13/06/2014 05:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies and Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University ofArizona are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arizona Journal of HispanicCultural Studies.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.2.32.49 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 05:33:09 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 309

nalistic as well fiction and non-fiction writing to be found. Perhaps reflecting the editors' current loca

tions and local knowledge of the border, the book tends to focus on El Paso/Ju?rez and Tijuana with

relatively little on other areas such as the border from Brownsville/Matamoros to Laredo/Nuevo Laredo and the Arizona/Sonora border stretch in

cluding Nogales, Arizona/Nogales, Sonora. How

ever, these criticisms aside, Puro Border stands as a

very good introduction for the general reader on

some of the issues that plague the U.S.-Mexico border at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Chuck Tatum The University of Arizona

Decohnial Voices. Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century Indiana University Press, 2002 Edited by Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi H.

Qui??nez

The past decade has seen the publication of a string of groundbreaking studies focusing on

Chicana/o criticism and cultural studies includ

ing Ram?n Sald?var, Chicano Narrative: The Dia lectics of Difference (1990); Jos? David Sald?var, The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural

Critique, and Literary History (1991); Jos? David Sald?var and H?ctor Calder?n, editors, Criticism in the Borderlands: Studies in Chicano Literature and Ideology (1991); Rafael P?rez Torres, Move ments in Chicano Poetry: Against Margins, Against Myths (1995); Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis-, Jos? David

Sald?var, Border Matters: RemappingAmerican Cul tural Studies ( 1997) ; Alfred Arteaga, Chicano Po etics: Heterotexts and Hybridities (1997); Carla

Trujillo, ed., Living Chicana Theory (1998); David Maciel and Maria Herrera-Sobek, Chicano Renais sance: Contemporary Cultural Trends-, and Sonia Sald?var Hull, Feminism on the Border: Chicana Gender Politics and Literature (2000).

Decolonial Voices includes eighteen essays appearing for the first time and two essays by Jos? David Sald?var and Norma ?larcon previously

published. This anthology is a showcase of intel lectual originality and keen insight from both well established scholars such as Sald?var, ?larcon, Vicki

Ruiz, Cordelia Candelaria, Patricia Penn-Hilden, and Rolando Romero and a broad spectrum of

emerging scholars who are beginning to make their mark on the rapidly expanding field of Chicana/o cultural studies.

In compiling a first-rate collection of essays that in many cases expand the limits of current

Chicana/o scholarship, the editors have set out a most ambitious set of goals that more cautious editors might have avoided. Aldama and Quinonez have, in large part, succeeded in stunning fashion to offer, in their words, "a range of interdiscipli nary essays that discuss racialized, subaltern, femi

nist, and diasporic identities and the aesthetic poli tics of hybrid and mestiza/o cultural productions" (2). They have also taken a very significant step towards reflecting key directions in Chicana/o cultural studies including the charting of:

how subaltern cultural productions of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands [...]

speak to what Walter Mignolo [...] considers the intersections of 'local,'

'hemispheric,' and 'globalized' power relations of the border imaginary. (2-3)

The editors have also taken at least some impor tant, if tentative steps, towards creating an "inter

ethnic, comparative, and transnational dialogue" between Chicana/o, African American, Mexican

feminist, and U.S. Native American cultural vo

cabularies. "Tentative" in the sense that the vol

ume does not include a genuine dialogue that

might have been enhanced by a series of responses by African American, Native American, and Mexi can critics and theorists to some of the anthologies key essays. This is not meant so much as a criticism but rather as a recommendation and an opportu

nity for some enterprising scholar/editors who

might put together such an anthology in the fu ture. To have included additional essays would have expanded this current volume way beyond its final substantive length of over 400 pages. Aca demic presses do not tend to look favorably on such voluminous works.

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310 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies

The U.S.-Mexico border is a contested

physical, geopolitical, globalized, militarized, socio

economic, and historical site that has been studied

extensively by both Mexican and U.S. scholars. Less studied is this 3,000-mile stretch of land with its many points of contact on a daily basis as a

discursive, linguistic, cultural, and representational space. Decolonial Voices focuses on the latter par

ticularly in Part I and Part III titled, respectively, "Dangerous Bodies" and "Mapping Space and

Reclaiming Place."

Although every essay in this anthology adds to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the multi-dimensionality and complexity of the

border, a few of the essays are particularly illumi

nating. For example, Arturo Aldamas "Millennial Anxieties: Borders, Violence, and the Struggle for Chicano and Chicano Subjectivity," seeks to situ ate the "diverse practices of critical U.S.-Mexican

borderland inquiry" (11) in the historical moment at the end of twentieth century and the begin ning of a new millennium. Drawing on the his torical record beginning with the unmet commit

ments declared in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the legacy of these unmet commit

ments, Aldama explores in his essay the relation

ship between discourses of "otherization" and state

enforced acts of violence against Mexican and other

Latin American immigrants as well as against

Chicana/o youth. He rejects much theorizing about the border, which seems to ignore the mate

rial conditions of these populations. Perhaps his most notable contribution to the field is found in

questions he poses as a challenge

to current and

future scholars, such as:

Can a subject, enveloped by condi tions of intense physical domination

by state, maintain a sense of his or her own subjectivity while the body is

being repressed or tortured? Or is tor ture and repression precisely the point at which subjectivity is reconsidered via the channels of the body?.. .How do we theorize about or respond to

such acts of power on the body, which are an all too familiar sight in poor

neighborhoods in the United States...

What does resistance (in the cultural studies sense of the word) mean in these situations where people

are se

verely beaten or killed... ? (24)

These are fundamental questions that go to the

very core of our intellectual and scholarly pursuits in the academy, especially in an era in which much

scholarly writing is dominated by an overlay of

highly specialized and often obscure discourse and

jargon that seems often to be an end in itself. Hap pily, precious few of the essays in this anthology suffer from such jargon-laden discourse; Aldamas

essay is an exemplar of clear and highly articulate and informed writing that engages the reader in

very important questions regarding the role of a

scholar within a very vexed global and domestic

society.

Essays by Nez Perce historian and cultural critic Patricia Penn-Hilden and by Chicana histo rian Vicki Ruiz are also marvelous examples of clear and socially focused scholarly writing in this volume. As formally trained historians, both Penn

Hilden and Ruiz add a disciplinary perspective? but not

"interdisciplinary," which assumes a dy

namic dialogue or explicitly interactive exchange of ideas and approaches across

disciplines?that is additive. It is a great credit to the editors who included Penn-Hilden's essay in which he pre sents his views on an historical myth that the

Spanish military, the missionaries who accompa nied them, and the later Spanish colonizers treated the indigenous populations they encountered

with respect and equality. Penn-Hilden points out that even some well-respected historians such

as Carey McWilliams in his classic 1948 North

from Mexico have, perhaps inadvertently, given credibility to this myth. Penn-Hilden views

McWilliams as no less than an apologist for the

Spanish invasion of Native American lands.

Moreover, she is distressed by her colleagues who seem "steeped in a postmodern tolerance of his

torically preposterous inventions" and offended

by their ignorance of the historically documented record of Spanish/Mexican enslavement and ex

ploitation of indigenous peoples of the south west. She writes eloquently that the breaking down of borders between ethnic groups must be

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Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies 311

grounded in the recognition that they shared a

history of adversity. Vicki Ruiz's essay, "Color Coded: Reflec

tions at the Millennium," which reflects the intel lectual maturity, sophistication, and wisdom of a

senior scholar, is a perceptive and most informa tive look at the resurgence of nativism at century's end. With her analysis of a few carefully selected

examples by government officials, the media, and

overtly racist, anti-immigrant groups, she uncov

ers how the patterns of the century-old process of "othering" functions insidiously in the con

temporary world along the U.S-Mexico border and elsewhere where concentrations of Ch?canos and Mexicans are found. She shows how nativ

ist-tinged suburban legends have found their

way into cultural iconography and political dis course such as the selling of California's Proposi tion 187.

As I mentioned earlier, although it was

clearly not the intent of the editors to create a

dynamic and more intentional dialogue among critics and theorists with diverse ethnic, gender, and national perspectives, the anthology could have been enriched by the inclusion of at least a

few more non-Chicana/o scholars. Penn-Hilden's

essay is a powerful example of a perspective that one does not often find in critical anthologies of this type. Again, an anthology characterized by balanced perspectives?theoretical, gender, disci

plinary, methodological, national, ethnic, etc?

with a focus on the U.S.-Mexico border would be most valuable.

Chuck Tatum The University of Arizona

Aprender a huir Sek Barrai, 2002 Por Care Santos

La narrativa de Care Santos (Matar?, 1970) ha estado centrada frecuentemente en una tem?ti

ca que se hace eco de los problemas vitales de la

juventud. A este respecto baste recordar t?tulos

como La muerte de Kurt Cobain (1997) sobre la

muerte en plena juventud, Okupada (1997) so bre la ocupaci?n de casas, Operaci?n Virgo (2000) sobre la p?rdida de la virginidad en la adolescencia o Krysis (2002), thriller basado en video juegos y realidades virtuales. Sin embargo, en Aprender a

huir (2002) Santos relega a un segundo plano la

tem?tica, en este caso centrada en la huida en los a?os de madurez, para privilegiar una estructura narrativa compleja?compuesta de elipsis, repeti ciones, sobreentendidos y ambig?edades?que supera en consideraci?n a la historia contada. Mien

tras que el tema de Aprender a huir se desarrolla en el eje espacial?la vida de cuatro personajes en la ciudad de Barcelona?en la estructura la autora

utiliza el eje temporal y hace uso tanto de la t?cnica

contrapuntista como de la narraci?n recurrente. A

partir de estos dos modos narrativos, la novela ad

quiere una disposici?n de red dentro de la cual se

establece una meditaci?n sobre las relaciones so

ciales y los m?viles de la existencia. La estructura de Aprender se basa en el con

cepto nietzschiano de apol?neo/dionisiaco, de for ma que la novela se divide en dos partes?titula das "La noche" y "El d?a"?de longitud muy dis tinta: la primera ocupa m?s de las dos terceras par tes de la paginaci?n total, haciendo as? hincapi? en

la trascendencia del lado oculto de la existencia. La narraci?n progresa de manera acelerada e

impreci sa durante "La noche," momento de la huida ve

hemente de los protagonistas, para volverse pausa da y expl?cita en el transcurso de "El d?a"; es decir, la noche/deseo acoge la acci?n dionisiaca en oposi ci?n al d?a/raz?n que da forma a la perspectiva apol?nea, reflexiva y ordenada. Por este motivo, en

"La noche," el lector asiste a la fuga de los protago nistas sin entender las motivaciones ?ltimas de la misma y tendr? que esperar la llegada de "El d?a"

para entrever la l?gica de sus acciones y decisiones. Como consecuencia de esta estructura dual, el des

enlace de la historia ocurre en la p?gina 151, al finalizar "La noche," y, sin embargo, el suspenso se

mantiene magistralmente durante "El d?a," aun

que se presenten al lector los mismos hechos con

diferente luz/perspectiva. "La noche" est? organizada alrededor de

nueve cap?tulos, subdivididos en apartados vin culados directamente con los cuatro personajes, tres de ellos en fuga?Andrea Ad?n, Pedro y

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