The Restless Dead: Necrowriting and Disappropriation

by Cristina Rivera Garza, Robin Myers (Translator)

Overview

Based on comparative readings of contemporary books from Latin America, Spain, and the United States, the essays in this book present a radical critique against strategies of literary appropriation that were once thought of as neutral, and even concomitant, components of the writing process. Debunking the position of the author as the center of analysis, Cristina Rivera Garza argues for the communality—a term used by anthropologist Floriberto Díaz to describe modes of life of Indigenous peoples of Oaxaca based on notions of collaborative labor—permeating all writing processes.

Disappropriating is a political operation at the core of projects acknowledging, both at ethical and aesthetic levels, that writers always work with materials that are not their own. Writers borrow from the practitioners of a language, entering in a debt relationship that can only be covered by ushering the text back to the communities from which it grew. In a world rife with violence, where the experiences of many are erased by pillage and extraction, writing among and for the dead is a form of necrowriting that may well become a life-affirming act of decolonization and resistance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826501226
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	10/15/2020
Series:	Critical Mexican Studies , #1
Pages:	188
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Author, translator, and critic Cristina Rivera Garza is the author of six novels, three of which have been translated into English: No One Will See Me Cry, The Iliac Crest, and The Taiga Syndrome. She is the founder of the PhD program in creative writing in Spanish and distinguished professor at the University of Houston.

Robin Myers is a Mexico City–based translator and poet.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
My Journey through Transkrit: Planetary, Sporadic, Exphonic
Disappropriation: Writing with and for the Dead
Uses of the Archive: From the Historical Novel to Documentary Writing
Undead Authors: The Autobiographical and David Markson (1927–2010)
Brief Missives from Pompeii: The Production of Present
Writing against Violence: Make No Mistake: This Letter Is All Business
On Alert: Writing in Spanish in the United States Today
Let’s Be Stubborn
Notes