Violentologies: Violence, Identity, and Ideology in Latina/o Literature

by B. V. Olguín

Overview

Violentologies: Violence, Identity, and Ideology in Latina/o Literature, explores how various forms of violence undergird a wide range of Latina/o subjectivities, or Latinidades, from 1835 to the present. Drawing upon the Colombian interdisciplinary field of violence studies known as violentología, which examines the transformation of Colombian society during a century of political and interpersonal violence, this book adapts the neologism "violentology" as a heuristic device and epistemic category to map the salience of violence in Latina/o history, life, and culture in the U.S. and globally. Based on one hundred primary texts and archival documents from an expansive range of Latina/o communities - Chicana/o, Puerto Rican, Cuban American, Dominican American, Salvadoran American, Guatemalan American, and various mixed-heritages and transversal hybridities throughout the world - Violentologies features multiple generations of Latinx combatants, wartime non-combatants, and "peacetime" civilians whose identities and ideologies extend through, and also far beyond, familiar Latinidades. Based on this discrepant archive, Violentologies articulates a contrapuntal assessment of the inchoate, contradictory, and complex range of violence-based Latina/o ontologies and epistemologies, and corresponding negotiations of power, or ideologies, pursuant to an expansive and meta-critical Pan-Latina/o methodology and, ultimately, an anti-identitarian Post-Latina/o paradigm.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780192608192
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	12/29/2020
Series:	Oxford Studies in American Literary History
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

B. V. Olguín is the Robert and Liisa Erickson Presidential Chair in English, and Director of the Global Latinidades Project, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and is a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow, and National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Research Fellow. He previously served on English Department faculties at Cornell University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, with visiting appointments in the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Olguín is the author of La Pinta: Chicana/o History, Culture, and Politics (University of Texas Press, 2010).

Table of Contents

Preface
From Fort Knox, Kentucky to Havana, Cuba: Testimonial Reflections on Race, War, and Revolution
Introduction
Violentologies: Violence, Ideology, and Supra-Latina/o Ontologies
Part I: Warfare and Latina/o Archetypes
1. Caballeros and Indians: Land, War, and the Indian Question in Latina/o Autobiography, Historical Fiction, and Popular Culture
2. Macho Man: Homosocial Soldiering and Ideological Dissensus in Mexican American WWII Memoir, Theater, and Film
Part II: Violence and the Global Latinidades
3. Latina/o-Asian Encounters: Transversal Syntheses in Asia, the "Orient," and the Ummah in Latina/o Wartime Narrative, Travelogue, Spoken Word, and Hip Hop
4. Violence and the TransNational Question: Regionalism, Nationalism, and Internationalism in Latina/o War Literature
5. Militarized Mestizajes: Combat, Transculturation, and Imperialism in Latina/o Life Writing from the War on Terror
Conclusion
The Latinx Mixtape: Violentologies, the End of Latina/o Studies, and Post-Latina/o Futures

Editorial Reviews

"Critics of U.S. Latinidades have sustained an overt or covert ethnonationalist perspective that Olguín exposes by undertaking a violentological archival, interpretive, political, and theoretical project that sustains an anti-imperialist and anti-settler colonialist critique. He reads against the grain of a patriarchal teleological ideology, following the lead of groundbreaking Chicana and Latina feminists, and thus further breaks down the logic of violentology. Olguín's critique of the field is a magnificent tour de force, and he challenges all of us to undertake a paradigm shift. After reading his arguments throughout texts I strongly agree with him." — Norma Alarcón, Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley, Founder, Third Woman Press

"What does a materialist history of violence in Latina/o modes of being and knowing teach us about power, identity, and agency? Olguín answers this question by providing a compelling and original analysis of a wide range of cultural texts mapping the profound centrality of the landscape of violence (from war to psychic and emotional violence) in Latina/o life. Violentologies calls for nothing less than a thorough restructuring of the prevailing frameworks of Latina/o Studies. A powerful and unsettling book that belongs on the bookshelves of cultural critics, scholar-activists, and teachers committed to confronting the inevitable fault-lines of violence in our everyday lives." — Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Syracuse University. Author of Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Duke University)

"Violentologies is a brilliant and sweeping book by one of the most intellectually formidable cultural and literary theorists of our times. Olguín explores how modes of violence in Latinx imaginative and testimonial writings are central to the proliferation of Latinx subjectivities or Latininades, from the nineteenth century to the present. This book is both urgent and important in understanding the shifting field-imaginary of Latinx studies, and its evolving intersections with allied fields and area studies." — José David Saldívar, Leon Sloss, Jr. Professor, Stanford University. Author of Trans-Americanity: Subaltern Modernities, Global Coloniality, and the Cultures of Greater Mexico (Duke University, 2011)

"Violentologies teaches readers to perceive differently the horrors, hurts, and sufferings of war; to diagnose and treat the sociality-of-violence that imbues our lives; and to allow glimpses of the social physics of peace. Olguín encourages and inspires us to engage in a form of auto-criticality that is derived from Anzaldúan, Freirean, and Fanonian insistences on critical thinking/doing/being. At every level, Violentologies is an original and landmark theoretical and methodological intervention that takes up, and goes beyond, previous contributions to revolutionary thinking. Arrayed here are original theories and methods that will advance any academic discipline committed to the study and deployment of liberation." — Chela Sandoval, Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara. Author of Author of Methodology of the Oppressed (University of Minnesota, 2000)

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