Ii Property, Mobility, and Epistemology in U.S. Women of Color Detective
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Property, Mobility, and Epistemology in U.S. Women of Color Detective Fiction DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Julia Istomina, M.F.A. Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2015 Dissertation Committee: Linda Mizejewski, Advisor Lynn Itagaki Theresa Delgadillo ii Copyright by Julia Istomina 2015 iii Abstract This project explores how U.S. women of color detective fiction novels interpret and revise methods for obtaining and transmitting knowledge while operating within political and economic climates that discipline and occlude oppositional narratives, historiographies, and identifications. U.S. women of color detective fiction emerged in the early 1990s during a time when institutions began to incorporate historically marginalized perspectives, but also when American and transnational corporate initiatives sought to stigmatize and profit from poor women of color. The novels featured in this project make use of a genre that is invested in creating exceptionally intelligent and capable detectives who seek to identify and correct social injustice. In the process, these novels employ historiographic epistemologies that are typically elided in Anglo- European philosophical and narrative productions. Historiographic epistemologies are theories concerning the encoding and transmission of knowledge that also serve as mediations regarding the composition of history, testimony, and narrative. Through the use of historiographic epistemologies, U.S. women of color detective fiction novels reveal the creative and narrative-building aspects of logical reasoning employed by detective fiction and rationalist discourse more broadly. Moving from the local with Barbara Neely’s Blanche on the Lam, to the transnational with Lucha Corpi’s Black Widow’s Wardrobe and Alicia Gaspar de Alba’s ii Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders, to the global with Charlotte Carter’s Coq au Vin and Lupe Solano’s Havana Nights, this project identifies connections and distinctions among these texts that in turn enable a more nuanced understanding of how precarity is constituted through the pervasive, implicit division between domestic (white) space and public (surveillanced) space. In their use of a genre that reflects institutional and social structural alignments and in their employment of non-European epistemologies such as second sight, jazz, conocimiento, spiritual mestizaje, and public motherhood, the novels featured in this project also emphasize the fact that categories of difference are dynamic and that the uniqueness of each individual experience within the U.S. matrix of institutional and social power creates unique modes of resistance. As a result, the larger critical contribution of this project is its identification of connections between place- based, decolonial, and global womanist theories of subjecthood and space that test the predictability of the gender-race-class intersectional lens of analysis. iii Dedication This document is dedicated to Olga, Andrei, Katie, Jim, and Hugo iv Acknowledgments Completing a doctoral degree takes a village. I completed my degree because of the kind, supportive, and brilliant faculty, administrative staff, colleagues, and friends who gave me the priceless gift of their time. I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Linda Mizejewski, and to the rest of my dissertation committee: Theresa Delgadillo and Lynn Itagaki. Linda was the perfect advisor, in every capacity, and her critical contributions to the study of gender, sexuality, masculinity, and power within American popular culture and literary works were an essential component to the development of my project. Linda’s ability to creatively explore with me possible topics and critical methodologies while also steering our conversations toward identifying deliverable and meaningful goals made the three years that I have spent working on my dissertation not only productive, but also enjoyable. Her unique ability to critically interrogate texts from various vantage points inspired me to reflect on aspects of representation, difference, and identity that I never thought possible before. Her patience, attentiveness, and prompt feedback to my own writing and subsequent chapter submissions allowed me to finish my project on time while also producing a work of scholarship of which I can be proud. Lynn Itagaki provided extensive and prompt feedback that was invaluable to my dissertation scope. Lynn also took the time to work with me on achieving greater clarity v and identifying broader implications for my analysis that ultimately strengthened my thesis and turned it from an interesting case study to something that I hope will contribute to critical inquiries within feminist scholarship on intersectionality and mobility. Lynn’s scholarly interventions into the fields of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, U.S. Multiethnic Studies, Asian American Studies continue to bring forth new insights and methodologies that are imperative to generating responses to the question of “where do we go from here?” in our contemporary moment of intersectional approaches to the study of difference and identity. I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with her and to learn from her. I am also incredibly lucky to have been able to work with Theresa Delgadillo, whose comparative and interdisciplinary scholarship on Chicana, ethnic, and gender studies were invaluable sources for my project. I am especially indebted to Theresa for helping me understand the concepts of conocimiento, spiritual mestizaje, and decolonial contexts for reading Mexican American women’s literary and critical productions. These approaches enhanced my understanding of thinking through border as both geographic and psychic concepts, among other important ideas. I am also grateful for the mentorship and professional guidance of my graduate mentor, Anne Jansen, who is now an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Asheville in Tennessee. Anne went above and beyond the call of duty from the beginning to the end of my graduate study at OSU to talk about possible professors with whom I might take courses, how I should structure my candidacy exam reading lists, and how to cope with the pressures of graduate study in general. I hope to model her generosity in the years to come. vi Graduate study is a five-year process that affords students the chance to work with a variety of professors and to solidify a particular field, scope, and method of inquiry for the dissertation. I would not have been able to successfully complete the project without several professors who played key roles in my academic development. First, I am grateful to Ryan Friedman, whose course on early twentieth-century film and race enabled me to learn about important critical methods and approaches that I have since applied to my research. I am grateful to Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́, whose course on postcolonial theory enabled me to write a paper that turned into my first publication. The course itself helped me think through ideas about gender, colonialism, and economics in ways that proved fundamental to my later project. I am also grateful to Joe Ponce, whose course on queer of color critique and literature led me, albeit late in my life, to critical and creative productions that play a key role in the underlying critical methodologies I employ in my project. I would like to take the time to thank Chadwick Allen, who helped me work through fundamental aspects of indigenous theory and literature while also serving as a mentor. I am also grateful to Brian McHale, who helped me understand how to parse historical trends in American literature while also accounting for parallel and countering interventions into canonical writers by historically underrepresented authors. I am grateful to his work on genre fiction and for his affirmation that detective fiction is “the epistemological genre par excellance.” I am extremely grateful for the guidance and mentorship of David Herman, who helped me think about narrative and form in new and textured ways. vii I am thankful to Andreá Williams for her willingness to talk with me about my project and allowing me sit in on her course on theorizations of marriage and love in contemporary African American popular culture and literary productions. This experience helped me shape my reading of Blanche White’s (Blanche on the Lam) social and psychic resistance to white heteronormative compensatory scripts. I am grateful to Jared Gardner for allowing me to complete my pedagogical training with him in his course on popular culture. His unique ability to weave together historical context, popular culture materials, and theoretical insights showed me that there are subtle ways to achieve the teaching of critical analysis and consciousness s in the classroom. Amy Shuman was extremely helpful in providing guidance and feedback on my earlier theorizations of the politics of difference. Maurice Stevens helped me recognize the importance of getting different disciplines into the same room to think about investments in certain methodological approaches and the value of diversity with respect to disciplinary training. Claire Robertson took a chance on an English Ph.D. student in her women’s and gender studies course. This course not only helped me learn the particular critical genealogy of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, but it also enabled me to connect with students from other disciplines