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