Panel: Self-Representation in Chicana/o and U.S.-Mexico Border
Literature
Copanelists: Javier Duran and Charles Tatum
In his 1993 seminal work My History, Not Yours: The Formation of Mexican American Autobiography, critic Genaro Padilla’s states:
Traditional genre constraints have been exclusionary and must be renegotiated, wedged open to alternate forms of self-representation—historiography, cultural ethnography, folkloristic narratives—that do not focus exclusively on the development of individual personality so much as on the formation, and transformation, of the individual within a community. (30)
Padilla’s comments reflect not only an emergent analytical basis for Mexican American autobiography, but also reveal a series of evolving trends in Chicana/o and US-Mexico border life writings developed over the last fifteen years. This panel aims to undertake a close look at these trends and frame them under current discussions on autobiography and life writing studies.
The principal aim of this paper is to illustrate how the border functions contradictorily as a space of repression and potential libratory change, being both the site of state exercised power as well as the metaphysical entryway to an understanding of being beyond identity. Following Badiou, the essay focuses on literary representations of the border’s dual function—that of enforcing the politicocultural difference of citizenship while repressing the more radical reality of infinite alterity.
The presence of México in the Chicano/a cultural imagination has been problematic since the inception of Chicanismo in the 1960s and its subsequent development in the 1970s and 1980s. Rich in culture and history, México often serves as a space of mythic origins and exotic difference, as seen in the popularized concept of Aztlán. However, also being the source of cultural rejection for Chicano/as, México continues to function as a spatial metaphor for an unattainable reconciliation with the past. The border, in such instances, functions as more than a geopolitical line separating two nations; it is also a space of tension and conflict, where ideologies clash and difference is enforced through violence and repression. Yet the border also functions as a marker for change, for transition, where one exits one world only to enter another, thus allowing for the possibility of transformation. It is in this manner that the border acquires an intriguing and complex contradictory nature, where the logic of difference is authoritatively administered and enforced, while remaining unstable and open to constant subversion.
Carlos Gallego is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Arizona. His interests include twentieth century American literature, Chicano/a studies, philosophy, and critical theory. He has contributed work to journals such as Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quartelry, Aztlán, and Western Humanities Review, and is currently working on a book manuscript examining the transcendence of identity thinking in Chicano/a literature.