Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation
Winner, 2021 NACCS Book Award, given by the National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies

Explores the how, why, and what of contemporary Chicanx culture, including punk rock, literary fiction, photography, mass graves, and digital and experimental installation art

Racial Immanence attempts to unravel a Gordian knot at the center of the study of race and discourse: it seeks to loosen the constraints that the politics of racial representation put on interpretive methods and on our understanding of race itself. Marissa K. López argues that reading Chicanx literary and cultural texts primarily for the ways they represent Chicanxness only reinscribes the very racial logic that such texts ostensibly set out to undo.

Racial Immanence proposes to read differently; instead of focusing on representation, it asks what Chicanx texts do, what they produce in the world, and specifically how they produce access to the ineffable but material experience of race. Intrigued by the attention to disease, disability, abjection, and sense experience that she sees increasing in Chicanx visual, literary, and performing arts in the late-twentieth century, López explores how and why artists use the body in contemporary Chicanx cultural production. Racial Immanence takes up works by writers like Dagoberto Gilb, Cecile Pineda, and Gil Cuadros, the photographers Ken Gonzales Day and Stefan Ruiz, and the band Piñata Protest to argue that the body offers a unique site for pushing back against identity politics. In so doing, the book challenges theoretical conversations around affect and the post-human and asks what it means to truly consider people of color as writersand artists. Moving beyond abjection, López models Chicanx cultural production as a way of fostering networks of connection that deepen our attachments to the material world.

1129821514
Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation
Winner, 2021 NACCS Book Award, given by the National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies

Explores the how, why, and what of contemporary Chicanx culture, including punk rock, literary fiction, photography, mass graves, and digital and experimental installation art

Racial Immanence attempts to unravel a Gordian knot at the center of the study of race and discourse: it seeks to loosen the constraints that the politics of racial representation put on interpretive methods and on our understanding of race itself. Marissa K. López argues that reading Chicanx literary and cultural texts primarily for the ways they represent Chicanxness only reinscribes the very racial logic that such texts ostensibly set out to undo.

Racial Immanence proposes to read differently; instead of focusing on representation, it asks what Chicanx texts do, what they produce in the world, and specifically how they produce access to the ineffable but material experience of race. Intrigued by the attention to disease, disability, abjection, and sense experience that she sees increasing in Chicanx visual, literary, and performing arts in the late-twentieth century, López explores how and why artists use the body in contemporary Chicanx cultural production. Racial Immanence takes up works by writers like Dagoberto Gilb, Cecile Pineda, and Gil Cuadros, the photographers Ken Gonzales Day and Stefan Ruiz, and the band Piñata Protest to argue that the body offers a unique site for pushing back against identity politics. In so doing, the book challenges theoretical conversations around affect and the post-human and asks what it means to truly consider people of color as writersand artists. Moving beyond abjection, López models Chicanx cultural production as a way of fostering networks of connection that deepen our attachments to the material world.

28.0 In Stock
Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation

Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation

by Marissa K. López
Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation

Racial Immanence: Chicanx Bodies beyond Representation

by Marissa K. López

Paperback

$28.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

Winner, 2021 NACCS Book Award, given by the National Association for Chicano and Chicana Studies

Explores the how, why, and what of contemporary Chicanx culture, including punk rock, literary fiction, photography, mass graves, and digital and experimental installation art

Racial Immanence attempts to unravel a Gordian knot at the center of the study of race and discourse: it seeks to loosen the constraints that the politics of racial representation put on interpretive methods and on our understanding of race itself. Marissa K. López argues that reading Chicanx literary and cultural texts primarily for the ways they represent Chicanxness only reinscribes the very racial logic that such texts ostensibly set out to undo.

Racial Immanence proposes to read differently; instead of focusing on representation, it asks what Chicanx texts do, what they produce in the world, and specifically how they produce access to the ineffable but material experience of race. Intrigued by the attention to disease, disability, abjection, and sense experience that she sees increasing in Chicanx visual, literary, and performing arts in the late-twentieth century, López explores how and why artists use the body in contemporary Chicanx cultural production. Racial Immanence takes up works by writers like Dagoberto Gilb, Cecile Pineda, and Gil Cuadros, the photographers Ken Gonzales Day and Stefan Ruiz, and the band Piñata Protest to argue that the body offers a unique site for pushing back against identity politics. In so doing, the book challenges theoretical conversations around affect and the post-human and asks what it means to truly consider people of color as writersand artists. Moving beyond abjection, López models Chicanx cultural production as a way of fostering networks of connection that deepen our attachments to the material world.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781479813902
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 08/20/2019
Pages: 208
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marissa K. López is Associate Professor of English and Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. She is the author of Chicano Nations: The Hemispheric Origins of Mexican American Literature (NYU Press, 2011) and the Vice President of the Latina/o Studies Association.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Santa Anna's Wooden Leg and Other Things about the Chicanx Body; or, What Are We Really Talking about When We Talk about Chicanx Literature? 1

1 RACE: Dagoberto Gilbs Phenomenology 25

2 FACE: Cecile Pineda's Spectacular Blank Slate 57

3 PLACE: Authenticity, Metaphor, and AIDS in Gil Cuadros and Sheila Ortiz Taylor 91

4 WASTE: The Trash Fiction of Alejandro Morales, Beatrice Pita, and Rosaura Sánchez 119

Coda. Accordions of Abjection: Genealogies of Chicanx Punk 151

Acknowledgments 159

Notes 161

Works Cited 173

Index 183

About the Author 191

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews