Trans-Americanity : subaltern modernities, global coloniality, and the cultures of greater Mexico
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Trans-Americanity : subaltern modernities, global coloniality, and the cultures of greater Mexico
（New Americanists）
Duke University Press, 2012
- : pbk
- : cloth
Available at 4 libraries
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A founder of U.S.-Mexico border studies, Jose David Saldivar is a leading figure in efforts to expand the scope of American studies. In Trans-Americanity, he advances that critical project by arguing for a transnational, antinational, and "outernational" paradigm for American studies. Saldivar urges Americanists to adopt a world-system scale of analysis. "Americanity as a Concept," an essay by the Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano and Immanuel Wallerstein, the architect of world-systems analysis, serves as a theoretical touchstone for Trans-Americanity. In conversation not only with Quijano and Wallerstein, but also with the theorists Gloria Anzaldua, John Beverley, Ranajit Guha, Walter D. Mignolo, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Saldivar explores questions of the subaltern and the coloniality of power, emphasizing their location within postcolonial studies. Analyzing the work of Jose Marti, Sandra Cisneros, Toni Morrison, Arundhati Roy, and many other writers, he addresses concerns such as the "unspeakable" in subalternized African American, U.S. Latino and Latina, Cuban, and South Asian literature; the rhetorical form of postcolonial narratives; and constructions of subalternized identities. In Trans-Americanity, Saldivar demonstrates and makes the case for Americanist critique based on a globalized study of the Americas.
Table of Contents
Preface: Americanity Otherwise ix
Acknowledgments xxix
1. Unsettling Race, Coloniality, and Caste in Anzaldua's Borderlands/La Frontera, Martinez's Parrot in the Oven, and Roy's The God of Small Things 1
2. Migratory Locations: Subaltern Modernity and Jose Marti's Trans-American Cultural Criticism 31
3. Looking Awry at the War of 1898: Theodore Roosevelt versus Miguel Barnet and Esteban Montejo 57
4. In Search of the "Mexican Elvis": Border Matters, Americanity, and Post-State-centric Thinking 75
5. Making U.S. Democracy Surreal: Political Race, Transmodern Realism, and the Miner's Canary 90
6. The Outernational Origins of Chicano/a Literature: Paredes's Asian-Pacific Routes and Hinojosa's Cuban Casa de las Americas Roots 123
7. Transnationalism Contested: On Sandra Cisnero's The House on Mango Street and Caramelo or Puro Cuento 152
Appendix: On the Borderlands of U.S. Empire: The Limitations of Geography, Ideology, and Discipline 183
Notes 213
References 239
Index 257
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