UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Latinidades and the Repository Function of the Poetic A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Clarissa A. Castaneda March 2019 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Steven Gould Axelrod, Chairperson Dr. Robert Hernández Dr. Fred Moten Dr. Rafael Pérez-Torres Dr. Marguerite Waller Copyright by Clarissa A. Castaneda 2019 The Dissertation of Clarissa A. Castaneda is approved: ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ ____________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California Riverside Acknowledgements Thank you to my committee members, mentors, and colleagues who have supported my research and writing over the past eight years. Your support and direction have been instrumental in the development and completion of this project. iv Dedication Thank you to my parents, Dr. Lillian Vega Castaneda and Dr. Mario Castaneda, who taught me how to be an indigenous Chicana with ideas and a voice. Thank you, for everything, to my siblings, Mario and Gabriella; to the children in my life, Christopher, Maya, Parker, Shane, and Eli; and to their mothers, Heather, Ardell, and Alison. To my husband, Chris Garcia, thank you for being my partner, every day. To my crazy friends and the Vega, Castaneda, and Hawelu families—this work is a reflection you, my familia, tribe, and ohana. The past eight years of study would not have been possible without the trailblazing efforts of my grandparents—Mario and Milagro Castaneda, and Henry and Evelyn Vega. My life is in your memory and my work is in your honor. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Latinidades and the Repository Function of the Poetic by Clarissa A. Castaneda Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, March 2019 Dr. Steven Gould Axelrod, Chairperson This dissertation’s critical nexus—the intersection of archival theory, archival practice, and poetics—is directly concerned with the poetic original and its flowerings, with attention to their archival functions in a contemporary context. Reading the poetic as a type of Anzaldúian narrative nepantla allows for the exploration of cultural and sociopolitical tensions that force the creation of a transformative space. My use of the term narrative nepantla is drawn from Gloria Anzaldúa’s concept of the nepantla as a borderland in-between state which is the product of cultural and sociopolitical othering. I am relating narrative to nepantla space in order to situate my research on Latin American poetics within fringe, de-centered, border-oriented perspectives which articulate the violence of their own genesis. Critically reading hybrid texts which translate the poetic into variant mediums is part of the process of inscribing official history with a spectrum of counter-histories which have resisted erasure. Like an archival document or object in a museum or government office, the poetic is a part of a larger system of production and sociocultural reality—but the poetic does not depend on an institutionally mandated call for collection and cataloguing. This dissertation addresses Latin American perspectives vi which are often tethered to traumatic events past, cultural erasure, and contemporary sociopolitical crises on a paradoxically personal-public scale. Ethnic minority counter- histories, art movements, testimonies, and ceremonial practices are in danger of erasure due to the lack of efforts to identify and preserve. Critically reading and researching the realities manifest in the narrative nepantla poetic, using decolonizing methodologies, may mitigate the erasure of racialized and marginalized American histories which are decolonizing systems of knowledge. Poetic discourse can be accessed and understood in critical terms that orient the spectrum of poetic form toward a decolonized reality. These chapters touch upon works by Julia de Burgos, Maceo Montoya, and Luis Valdez. Works by Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg are also explored in relation to Gloria Anzaldua’s poetics in Borderlands/La Frontera. vii Table of Contents Introduction 1-6 Chapter 1 The Articulation of Emptiness 7-34 Narrative Nepantla and the Poetic 7 Decolonizing Poetics 14 Theoretical Underpinnings 18 Chapter 2 Hybrid Poetics and the Counter-Historical 35-78 Reading Intertext and Collaboration 35 El mar y Julia: Poeticas Puertorriqueña as Latinx Palimpsest 43 The Song and the Sea 51 The Chicano Palimptext: Art, Death, and Altars 65 Chapter 3 Poetics Americana: From Whitman and Ginsberg to Anzaldúa 79-119 A New World Poetic 79 Old World Erasure, Peyote Angel Transformations, Alien Encounters 83 America, America! Norteamericana 103 The Superstitious, the Lunatics, and the Mestiza/o/x 117 Chapter 4 Pachuco Poetics: The Posture of Resistance and Lyrical Remembering 120-176 Situating the Pachucada 120 Analytical Lenses “In” and “Out” of The Pachucada 126 Popular Entertainment, El Movimiento, and the Pachucada 137 viii Pachuco Poetics, Ese 147 The Pachucada and Polyphony 169 Works Cited 177-191 ix Introduction The argument in this dissertation is divided into four primary parts. Chapter one argues that the repository function of the poetic is that it allows for borderland perspectives to exist in relation to paradoxical modes of discourse. I call such archival spaces narrative nepantlas, as they archive a bordered and othered perspective which is contending with the inexpressible. Chapter two argues that hybrid poetics which archive the counter-historical are a product of translatability. The elements which allow for re- signification from medium to medium is the poetic. Chapter three argues that the “Indian” trope assumes the erasure of an actual Indian body. Gloria Anzaldúa’s embodied “poetics Americana” serve to reclaim the brown body and its indigenous reality. Her poetry decolonizes the “Indian” trope. In chapter four, I argue that Luis Valdez’ Zoot Suit uses pachuco poetics to disrupt and destabilize a status quo conception of Chicana/o/x reality. Valdez uses pachuco poetics to render a hybrid and decolonizing system of symbols and histories which directly contradict the official record of actual real-life events. Collectively, these chapter-oriented argumentative points serve to support my central thesis: The poetic can hold the breath of marginalized epistemic perspectives in language, visual art form, and music. The poetic delivered from marginalized, fringe-oriented perspectives should be understood as a natural resource for decolonization. In addition to challenging the validity of official records which are designed to support the colonially rooted power of a Euro-American status quo, such poetics support the social justice and consciousness raising work needed in an increasingly anti-Latina/o/x, authoritarian and xenophobic America. 1 The focus of chapter one is the Western oriented conception of archives and poetics, as they may relate to our conception of history, space, and authority. Understanding the archive as a tradition which is deeply connected to political power, social norms, and the process of acquiring, cataloguing, preserving, and assessing documents (and the offices or people which produce them) is the beginning of being able to change the purpose and conception of “the archive.” While my research does not attempt to reconceive of government archives and institutional archives relating to legal systems and economic transactions, it does attempt to reorient the conception of the archive toward the inclusion of perspectives in danger of erasure from the ethos of our communities. The project of cultural preservation is widely supported outside of the United States, where there are archaeological sites and buildings which represent empires and epistemic perspectives long past. However, in the United States, the project of cultural preservation at an intellectual, metaphysical, and material level is often the work of community organizations, regional non-profits, and academic institutions. When sites like Chavez Ravine are razed to build Dodger Stadium, the remnants of La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop become diasporic. There are photographs, police and legal documents, and the family members of the displaced who may have memorized their family’s story of Chavez Ravine. Somewhere, there may be journals from residents that narrate their experience. None of these documents, objects, oral stories, private papers, or ephemera are in one central archive. There is no museum which is dedicated to the preservation of Chavez Ravine at a material or metaphysical level. There is no site to preserve, unless you count the Dodgers home plate as “home” in another sense. The best 2 archives of Chavez Ravine are musical and dramatic: Ry Cooder’s Chavez Ravine and Culture Clash’s Chavez Ravine. These works, one musical and one dramatic, each have elements of the poetic, through lyric and monologue. They may not be “true,” and they may not archive “things” from Chavez Ravine, but they do hold the epistemic perspective and counter-cultural histories which are unique to the three barrios. The purpose of chapter one’s exploration of theoretical underpinnings in relation to “the archive” is to demonstrate that critically reading the archival function of the poetic is one way to advocate for counter-historical perspectives which are often erased, obscured, or bull- dozed over