And Form in Oscar Zeta Acosta's the Revolt of the Cockroach People, and Alejandro Morales's the Rag Doll Plagues

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

Volume 21 Self/Story Article 4

2012

Dismemberment in the Chicana/o Body Politic: Fragmenting Nationness and Form in Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People, and Alejandro Morales's The Rag Doll Plagues

Danizete Martinez University of New Mexico

DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.21.04

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Recommended Citation Martinez, Danizete (2012) "Dismemberment in the Chicana/o Body Politic: Fragmenting Nationness and Form in Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People, and Alejandro Morales's The Rag Doll Plagues," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 21 , Article 4. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.21.04 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol21/iss1/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to [email protected] lviii Gage Averill, A d'!) for the hlllller, a d'!) for Ihe P'!Y poplllor mlln& olld power ill Haiti (Chicago: University Dismemberment in the Chicana/o Body Politic of Chicago Press, 1997), 154-60. Fragmenting Nationness and Form in Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Iix Laferriere 1994, 25-7. Ix Ibid, 106. Cockroach People, and Alejandro Morales's The Rag Doll Plagues

Ixi David Homel, "Tin-Fluting It: On Translating Dany Laferriere," in Cllllllre ill Trollnt: Trollslotillg Ihe Ulerotllre ofQJlebe&, ed. Sherry Simon, 1st ed. (Montreal: Vehicule, 1995),47-8. - Danizete Martinez !xii Essar, 933. lxiii Nathalie Courey, "Le gout des jeanues filles de Dany Laferriere: du chaos a la reconstruction du sens," Priren&e Fron&ophone 63 (2004): 86. Dismemberment tends to expose the social and political inscription of the human body and lxiv Essar, 933. hence of the subject. !xv Dany Laferriere, Le gout des jeunes.jilles. (VLB editeur, 2004), 32. -Margaret E. Owens, Stages ojDisfllelllbemJellt ~ For a discussion of the movie version of Legout des.jmnes. jilles., see Mylene F. Dorce, "Le gout des Je.unes filles de Dany Laferriere: De I'oeuvre romanesque a la production cinematographique," in Riro bun ... : Hllmollr et lronie dons Ies. lil/erolllre! et Ie anemo fronrophones, ed. Christiane Ndiaye, Essais. (Montreal: Twentieth century body studies have frequently centered on corporeal Memoire d'encrier, 2008), 263-277 and Lee Skallerup Bessette, "Becoming a Gwo Neg in 1970s Haiti: fragmentation and have attributed the phenomenon to the human psyche's response to D~y Laferriere's Coming-of-Age Film Le Gout des Jeunes Pilles (On the Verge of Fever)," in Gory advancements in science, technology, and communication, and how these shifts have ThIrd Smens: A Stlltfy ofViolen&e and MosClilinity in Posl&ololliol Films, ed. Swaralipi Nandi and Esha influenced our basic process of socialization. Jacques Lacan has referred to this as the Chatterjee (New Delhi: Zubaan Books, 2011). "fragility of the ego" and ascribes it to an inevitable repercussion of entering the symbolic !xvii Laferriere 2004, 304. social order; hence, the fracrured body has become a metaphor for the modern fissured Ixvili Ibid, 307. psychological condition.' Here, I consider how trearments of dismemberment center on the !xix Ibid, 312. construction and deconstruction of Chicana/o nationalist discourse. I focus on the cracks of La S~phie Kerouack, "Zone de turbulence: Port-au-Prince out Ie mouvement perpetuel dans Le gout radical discourse in Acosta's The Revolt ojthe Cockroach People (1973) and in the postmodern des Jeunes filles de Dany Laferriere," Frollrophonies d'AlI/eriqlle 21 (2006): 87. apocalyptic historiography of Morales's The Rag Doll Plogtles (1992) in order to illustrate the Ixxi Philippe Lejeune, ''Le journal comme 'anti fiction'," olllopo&le.org, 2005, thematic resonance in twO distinct historical moments and novelistic forms whose crises http://www.autopacte.org/Antifiction.htrnl. focus on violence directed towards the body and its relation to the Chicana/o body politic. Ixxii Laferriere 2004, 33. These texts reveal that within each form of violence and within each instance of Ixxiii Ibid, 325. dismemberment there exists a differently encoded set of implications that account for the Ixxiv Ibid, 323. excision and extraction of the body within the larger framework of Chicana/o culrural Ixxv.Jeremy D. P~~kin, '~hilip Lejeune, Explorer of the Diary," in On diary, ed. Jeremy D. Popkin and discourse. This includes the obvious aberrations to the integrity of the physical body, as well Julie Rak, by Philippe Lejeune (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 12. as to discursive fragmentations that imply cracks in psychological, social, and political Ixxvi Suzanne Bunkers, Inmibillg Ihe doify: mti&ol eJJ'!)s 011 wOlI/en's diaries (Amherst: University of spheres in different moments in Chicana/o history. In these narratives, dismemberment is Massachusetts Press, 1996), 5. an enacrment of violence that deconstructs pre-given notions regarding a fixed Chicana/o Lavii Laferriere 2004, 236-7. identity, and Acosta and Morales characterize what happens when the Mexican-American Ixxvili Ibid, 256-7. subject internalizes, resists, and rejects ambiguous racial discourses. Ixxiz Ibid, 258-9. La. Ibid, 259. Traditionally in twentieth-century body studies, threats to the integrity of the body Ixxxi Dany Laferriere, COllversoliOlls ove& Do,!)! Laferriere: illlerne/lls (Montreal: Les Editions de L'l Parole begin as a threat towards individual dissolution. Helaine Posner suggests that this Meteque, 2010), 46. preponderance is the result of the cultural isolation of the individual and the following Laxii Laferriere 2004, 245. inevitability that leaves the subject vulnerable to social, political, and physical assaults that are Ixxxiii Ibid, 250. aesthetically expressed through the dismemberment of limbs, internal organs, and bodily Ixxxiv Ibid. fluids that-when separated from their body proper-assume a subjective liminality.ii Oscar !xxxv Dany Laferriere, Un An De Vim Par TmljJs De Colostrophe (Henry Knisel Le&llIre Series) (Edmonton: Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People and Alejandro Morales's The Rag Doll Plogtles University of Alberta Press, 2010), 9-10. demonstrate how these same threats of corporeal violence and dissolution are also present in Chicana/o literarure, and point towards a shifting individual and collective cui rural identity.3 Much as Lazaro Lima asserts in The Lotillo Botfy (2007), I also maintain that dismemberment in Chicana/o cultural production reveals critical social upheavals that indicates "a divide that fracrure[s] alliances, elid[es] ethnic and racial identities, and disembod[ies] subjects from the protocols of citizenship." Two critical examples of this division in Chicana/o cultural production is evident in the nationalist and post-nationalist narratives of Acosta and Morales who treat dismemberment-resulting from autopsy and disease--as endemic of the fractured alliances that continue to suffuse the real and imagined corporeal integrity of the Chicana/o body politic. -37- - 38- D ismembered Ontology dismantling of the Chicana/o body and suffers a psyc~olow:cal ~ s membennen~-or . The motif of dismembennent is present at the inception of Chicana/o cultural fragmentation-in the Lacanian sense of the word. This ~plit ulomately lea~s him to re!ect production, beginning with its pre-conquest mythology. The legend of Coyolxauhqui clearly the nationalism he was deeply committed to and forces him to reevaluate his construcoon of demonstrates such violence as the Aztec Moon goddess was dismembered by her brother, identity and his connection to the Chicana/o community. the Sun god Huitzilopochtli. Many Chicana feminists such as Gloria Anzaldua and Cherne Moraga have approached the goddess's dismemberment as an opportunity to discuss the Much has been said concerning the ambiguity of Acosta's politics. Manuel Luis issues of oppression and violence that have worked to repress women and sustain a Martinez argues that while "the nationalist movimiC11to opted for a militant and isolating patriarchal cultural dominance. In later folklore that emerged from the cultural conflicts separation because it no longer believed in the possibility of a trans formative politics," I~ . between the United States and Mexico, the theme of bodily fragmentation is also portrayed Acosta, who was not capable of eradicating his "Americanness," and who sought to mamtaill as a powerful fonn of resistance, most explicitly in the legend of the California-Mexican his individuality within the larger Chicana/o community, was unable to give himself entirely bandit Joaquin Murieta that emerged when the first post-Mexican American War generation over to Brown Pride and the concept of Aztlin, the mythic homeland place of the Aztecs were becoming U.S. citizens (1848-1910).4 As Shelley Streeby and Jesse Aleman have already that symbolized a hopeful Chicana/o utopia. As a discursive strategy that functioned as a successfully illustrated, The Legend ofJoaquin Murieta (1854) critically engages issues of race and counter history Ie l.S. master nnrr:l1ivcs, zrl:in hccame a unifying force f(lr Chic:lnn ~, class in relation to American literature and national discourse. 5 For Aleman, Murieta's Mexicans, and recent immigrants. This singulan vision allowed for a. disparate community to decapitation is a literal and metaphoric act that "severs the head of radical ideology from the unite and identify with a common struggle, thus constructing a monolithic ideology that was racialized body politic and leaves it dismembered." 6 By situating Murieta's myth among grounded in a collective identity. However, as Acosta's narrative demonstrates, the other severed bodies of the dispossessed that include Santa Anna, New Mexico's spinosa differences among individuals and their ideas concerning constructions of the Chicano body brothers, and "the entire Mexican body politic that remained in Mexico's far northern politic were vast and subject to stresses ranging from person to person and state to state. As frontier [ ...J that functions as a reminder of the centrality of colonialism in the heartQand) of a result, the nationalist ideology that seduced Acosta in The Alltobiogrophy of a Bro/ll/1 BuJJalo American culture," Aleman acutely notes that the legend is another important example of (1972) is characterized in its dismembered form in Revolt to articulate cracks in 1960s and how fixed constructions of race collapse under the scrutiny of idealized national discourses.1 1970s Chicano national discourse.

The following examples enact multi-varied perspectives of a distinct Californian Acosta's fragmented and scatological prose is another example of his opposition Chicana/o sensibility--during, and after the 1960s-1970s Chicano Movement--ruJd reveal and substantiates the rascuache and the grotesque as transgressive characteristics in Chicana/o how dismembennent as a metaphor for cultural and individual fragmentation is key to narrative. According to Tomas Ybarra-Frausto: ''To be rasquache is to be down but not out understanding trends and fissures within this national discourse. Acosta's and Morales's tex [... J Very generally, rasquachismo is an underdog perspective-lo.s de abajo .. .it presupp~ses demonstrate how the act of dismemberment positions Chicanas/os within a tradition of a world view of the have nots, but it is a quality exemplified in objects and places and SOClal resistance in Mexican-American identity politics, specifically in how Acosta looks for a comportment ... it has evolved as a bicultural sensibility. 11 In this regard, to be rascuache is to revolution to reorganize the positioning of Chicanas/ os within the dominant socio be resourceful and successful in overcoming economic and social obstacles; it's an attitude economic American paradigm through protest and radical nationalism. Likewise, Morales born out of a dignified humility of making the most with what you have and agitating the invokes an apocalyptic vision of the future for Mexicans, Chicanas/os, and Anglo status quo. 12 In Revolt, Acosta's use of rascliachislIIo and dismemberment are written ways of Americans alike amidst impending ecological disaster. Through the metaphor of linking him to his proto-Mexican self and are means of negotiating his identity. 13 Acosta's dismemberment, each text demonstrates the different ways racial ideology is radicalized, rascliachisTlJo is transferred through his writing, which as Hector Calderon notes has not internalized, and rejected, and depicts a shifting national discourse that resists a static always been well received for its digression, self-indulgence, and lack of structure. Indeed, construction of collective and individual ethnic identity. Martinez has also pointed out that numerous Chicano/a scholars such as Juan Bruce- ovoa have criticized Acosta for his megalomaniac beatnik aspirations and lack of direction. 14 Cracks in Chicano Nationalism in Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt ofthe Cockroach However, if we consider the radical implications his narrative style offers, his books, as People Calderon suggests, can be considered a true reinvention of a new genre. 15 J:-lis fragmented The Revolt of the Cockroach People marks a significant rupture in Chicano nationalism style and his reordering of his readers' expectations is a radicalization of narrative .fonn. when Acosta, a seminal figure in the Chicano Movement, fl!lds himself actively participating Raymund A. Paredes also observes that Acosta's hyperbolic and outrageous style IS an in the dismemberment of his own people. D ismemberment and fragmentation are intrinsic extension of his personal excesses and paradoxes and is intended to push readers into a themes in Acosta's work and life and are vehicles for expressing his personal fissures in both nihilistic and apocalyptic understanding of contemporary life. 16 I-lis narrative is another Anglo-American and Chicana/o culture at large. In Lima's discussion of politicized cultural example of how his use of dismemberment and fragmentation reify the pluralities of production in the 1960s and 1970s, he points out that, ''The Chicano Movement intervened Chicana/o experience, perspective, and cracks of Chicana/o nationalism. in the national scene with symbolic representations of collective histories of dispossession during an age characterized by [... J scripted notions of American identity through fictions of Acosta's cultural paradox-of admiring and resisting fearures of both Anglo equality, national allegiance, and the promise of political participation." 8 Yet, instead of American and Chicana/o ideologies-motivated his political involvement and also quashed supporting this idealization of colJective identity (in assuming that collective histories lead to it. After realizing that he did not fit into either paradigm-neither with the Anglo-American collective futures), Acosta subverts the ideology through dismemberment. J:-lis narrative counterculture, nor with the Chicana/o nationalists-Revolt consequently became an account contribution to the corpus delicti of Chicana/o cultural production is a discursive of Acosta's struggle berween homogenous constructions of identity and cultural difference. deconstruction of the collective ideali.zation at the core of the Movement. 9 By orchestrating As an incongruous, uneven, and protean figure, Acosta is also fragmented and dismembered the fictional young vato loco Robert Fernandez's autopsy, Acosta realizes his complicity in the from both Chicana/o and Anglo American bodies in the very same ways that his narrative - 39- - 40 - takes shape. Indeed, Acosta's personal life reflected through his letters, poetry, college events and circumstances that led to his or her demise: ''The dead body on the table is many essays, unpublished manuscripts, and in the legal documents by and about him convey a things: a testimonial to a failure of the healing arts; a testimonial to the violence humans fragmented life made up of many disparate parts held together by a self-consciously inflict upon one another or upon themselves; and concrete evidence of our mortality." 19 constructed narrative. Robert Lee comments on the various reinventions of Oscar Zeta However, the debacle of Fernandez' autopsy does little to relate the circumstances of the Acosta: victim's death; rather, it becomes a symbolic psychological dissection of Acosta. As the most salient grotesque scene in the novel, the autopsy represents not only the dismembering of There is the anarcho-libertarian Chicano raised in California's Riverbank/Modesto Fernandez's body, but the severing of Acosta's identity politics and the institutional and who makes his name as a Legal Aid lawyer in Oakland and Los Angeles after dismembering of the Chicana/o body. The stress of the situation and his political qualifying in San Francisco in 1966. There is the Airforce enlistee who, on being disillusionment leads to Acosta's political disassociation with Chicana/o nationalism and sent to Panama, becomes a Pentecostal convert and missionary there (1949-52) triggers an internal psychological spli t: he is unable to live up to the stereorype of the before opting for apostasy and a return to California. There is the jailee in Ciudad underdog hero that he has created for himself. Witnessing the heap of butchered bodies Juarez, Mexico, in 1968, forced to argue in local court for his own interests in foreshadows the horror of Femandez's autopsy and Acosta's own complicity in the violence: uncertain street Spanish (or calo) after a spat with a hotelkeeper. Finally, there is the "I look around at these men in the room. Seven experts, Dr. aguchi and a Chinese doctor Oscar of the barricades, the battling lawyer of the schools and St. Basil's protest in from his staff, the orderly and a man from the Sheriffs ... they want IIle, a Chicano lawyer, to 1968. This is the "buffalo" who becomes La Raza Unida independent candidate for tell them where to begin. They want lIIe to direct them. It is too fantastic to take seriously. S?eriff of Los Angeles in 1970, who regularly affirms his first allegiance by signing 'How about this? Can you look there?' I point to the left cheek." 20 himself "Oscar Zeta Acosta, Chicano lawyer" and who finally leaves for Mexico in Fernandez's autopsy also represents Acosta's personal and political dismemberment despair, madness even, at the internal divisions of Chicano politics. 17 from a discourse that fails to include individuals on the fringe of society like Fernandez and Acosta: !he tensi~n of trying to control, or rather repress parts of Acosta's disparate p~rsonality erupts 10 the novel when he witnesses the autopsy of Robert Fernandez, who Naked bodies are stretched out on [hospital carts]. Bodies of red and purple meat; died under suspicious circumstances while being held in custody of the Los Angeles Sheriffs bodies of men with white skin gone yellow; bodies of black men with blood over department. F.ernandez is a seventeen-year-old Chicano with a long history of drug addiction torn faces. This one has an arm missing. The stub is tied off with plastic string. The and trouble WIth the law. To Acosta, Fernandez signifies the historical consequences of red-headed woman with full breasts? Someone has ripped the right ear from her sustain.ed par~digmatic racism: "The /Jato loco has been fighting with the pig since the Anglos head. The genitals of that spade are packed with towels. Look at it! The blood is still stole his land 10 the last century. He will continue to fight until he is exterminated." 18 In this gurgling. There, an old wino, his legs crushed, mangled, gone to mere meat. 21 case, his body is dismembered to mirror divisions within the Chicana/o body politic and fissures fraying a unified national discourse, echoing social conditions that have a historical For Julia Kristeva, the corpse is a sign of abjection, and its defilement a rupture of primal gro~cling ~th ~oaquin Murieta, the Mexican folk hero who eluded the Texas Rangers. In repression. Abjection shares the same interstitial realm with the severed body in that both addition to his dismemberment, fragmentation emerges in political implications in that represent the improper, unclean, and disruptive moments in our dominant systems of order Fernandez's death alienates Acosta from the Movement. that are often signaled by haunting representations of the Other. They are both presences that avoid assimilation yet cannot be gotten rid of. She reminds us, as does Freud, that Acosta's association with Fernandez and his family is book-ended by the rise and primitive societies sanctioned a space for the abject and taboo as a reminder of unknown fall of Acosta's identification with a singular Chicana/o nationalism. Before Fernandez's universal forces: ''The abject confronts us, on the one hand, with those fragile states where family approached Acosta for legal guidance, he and one hundred others had gathered to man strays on the territories of animal. Thus, by way of abjection, primitive societies have protest the arrest of twenty-one Chicanos and Chicanas at the St. Basil Church the day marked out a precise area of their culture in order to remove it from the threatening world before. Acosta experi~nced C~~ana/o.nationalism at its height and embraced the spirit of of animals or animalism, which were imagined as representatives of sex and murder." Z2 As a commuruty by collectively reslstlng raCIal, economic, and educational prejudice. Unlike in rupture of primal repression, abjection takes on the negative qualities of psychological Brown ~uf!alo where Acosta is in~estigating his hyphenated identity and feeling outcast from fragmentation that are sinister, scheming, shady, perverse, corruptive, lawless, and immoral. both SIdes of the Anglo and Chicana/o culture, his initial involvement with the movement Kristeva maintains that the corpse, then, is the utmost manifestation of abjection: "It is gestates in ReIIoltwithin a subversive space of protest that he has collaboratively created. death infecting life." Likewise, in this scene Acosta wields the dismembered corpse of Tho~gh ~e Fernandez family does not actively participate in Chicana/o militant politics, Fernandez to represent the subjugated institutionalized body of the Chicana/o subject. they Identify Acosta as a .fellow Mexican American willing to hear their story and help them face the Los Angeles Police Department. They believe that Fernandez did not commit With Acosta's complicity in Fernandez' autopsy-a literal dissection of the brown suicide as the sheriffs department claimed, but that he was murdered and that the crime was body-he is enacting this same search for truth about himself and his role in the Chicana/o covered ~p by the a~thorities. Supported and held in high esteem by the Chicana/o community, and as they hack away at the corpse he feverishly gets caught up in the violence commuruty, Acosta IS co?fident that the judicial system will crack under pressure, and and with horror realizes his participation in the dismemberment of his own people: requests for the exhumation of Fernandez's body and for another autopsy to take place where Acosta himself will be present. And when it is done, there is no more Robert. Oh, sure, they put the head back in the place. They sew it up as best as they can. But there is no part of the body that I . An a~topsy !s supposed to be a systematic procedure that must be performed have not ordered chopped. I, who am so good and deserving of love. Yes, me, the Without emotions, dJstaste, or sentimentality in order for the pathologist to discover the - 41 - - 42 - big chigoll! I, Mr. Buffalo Z. Brown. Me, I ordered those white men to cut up the ContamiNation of the Body in Alejandro Morales' The Rag Doll Plague!' (2004) has identified brown body of that Chicano boy, just another expendable Cockroach. 23 as the withering of the Chicano and Anglo-American body politic, colonial misrule, and a subversion-contarnination--of racial and cultural purity. As a result of preventative Elizabeth Klaver points out that according to Western epistemology, the cutting up and measures against disease (as depicted in Book One "Mexico City") or as a means of ensuring literary and visual representation of the dead body is a culturally constructed act for self job security and keeping the wheels of capitalistic production spinning smoothly (depicted in knowledge. 24 This she likens to the act of autopsy that Michel Foucault has identified as Book Three ''LAMEX''), severing is indicative of diminishing humanistic values and seeking a "residence of truth in the dark centre of things." 25 As a major figure in the pervasive ecologlcal consequences resulting from racist and greedy decision making on the Chicano Movement, Acosta finds himself actively participating in the dismemberment of his part of the dominant socio-political class. Fragmentation rendered as corporeal own people and he betrays the inefficacy of its political purpose. He recognizes his disfigurement in The Rag Doll Plagues articulates the limitations and dangers that rigld notions complicity with members of the group that symbolically represent the dominant order about race and class continue to violate the Chicana/o body politic. systematically oppressing Chicana/o civil rights. Furthermore, Acosta realizes that he will never be able to completely escape the cultural bifurcation-the splitting of Mexican and Morales' novel follows three incarnations of Doctor Gregory Revueleas as he leaps American identities-that has haunted him throughout his life. backward and forward in time, beginning as a Spanish doctor representing the Royal Protomedicato in Mexico City. Divisions between colonizing ideology and indigenous In the novel, revolt is initially expressed in Acosta's involvement with the Chicana/o culture signals the consequences of a crumbling empire through bodily dismemberment due rebellion against the dominant Anglo paradigm, but after Acosta's psychologlcal breakdown to disease, debauchery, and a collapsing infrastructure. This symbolic dismantling of overhis irreconcilable hyphenated-self, Acosta revolts against narrow nationalist identity European colonial rule not only anticipates a political severing of Mexico from Spain, but poli~cs. Fernandez's autopsy symbolically enacts a severing of the Chicana/o political body also predicates how dismemberment is used to depict ambiguous constructions of race and and illustrates Acosta's psychologlcal dismemberment After Fernandez's case is again ruled class throughout The Rag Doll Plaglles. Indeed, Morales claims that "Mexico City" deals with as a suicide and dismissed by the court, Acosta's internal struggle comes to a head and he the limitations and moral issues of science and ecologlcal consequences of poor begins to demonstrate ruptures in Chicana/o nationalist ideology by pulling nJovidas and administration on the part of the Spanish colonies. '1:7 His sharp contrast between the haves inciting rebellion. The fmt instance occurs when he and his militant friend, Gilbert, bomb a and the have-nots in ew Spain renders the wealth in obscene decadence while the poor are local Safeway in support of the United Farm Workers, and later when Acosta is alone and diseased and living in filth. Dr. Gregorio Revueltas is sent from the majesty of Spain in 1788 bombs the courthouse killing a fellow Chicano. His disillusionment with the Chicano to attend to an epidemic that is quickly infiltrating Mexico's center from its periphery. The Movement culminates in a massive cultural severing and his narrative demonstrates the areas where death is highest are inhabited by the poor who are unable to afford and limitations monolithic or one-dimensional identities impose on his sense of individuality. implement basic preventive measures that would stave off infection. As the disease Dismemberment in Acosta's narrative signifies ruptures in monolithic identity politics, progresses and adds to their squalor, it subsequently infects the judgment of its victims, and anticipated radical shifts in Chicana/o identity politics, and also forged new paths in further alienates th em from the ruling class: Chicana/o cultural production that acknowledged and celebrated the erratic and incongruous driving forces punctuating a cultural schizophrenia. Acosta's split ftom a rigld As we passed the Palace of the Inquisition, men and women squatted facing set of Chicana/o identity politics that marks the height of the Movement signals a trend in each other and deposited excrement and urine into the canal that ran down the Chicana/o discourse and literary production that privileges essentialized, or stereotypical, center of the street. As they met their human needs, they conversed ,vith ease and depictions of ethnic identity. After he realizes that the inherent fragmentation within the cordiality. Upon finishing, they simply raised their garment and walked away. They movement is also consonant with individual Chicana/o identity, he cannot accept a national had no paper nor cloth to practice anal hyglene. It was cleaner to defecate and stand discourse that-to him-ignored these complexities and projected a singular image that was than to employ your hand to wipe away the clinglng or watery excess. onetheles~, limited in scope and essentially negated the dynamism that predicated this ideology. many adults and children did use their hands. The windows of the houses along this street were tightly closed in a desperate attempt to keep out the gases of decaying Apocalyptic Energies in The Rag Doll Plagues animal and human waste. In an interview with Frederick Luis Aldama, Morales states that his writing is not Immediately before the carriage, a window suddenly opened. Without apocalyptic; rather that it contains two major apocalyptic energles of deconstruction and warning, a pail of excrement and urine was tossed out. At many points, the drainage cre~tion. 26 This statement underscores the same cultural tensions at play in Acosta's story; ditch running down the middle of the street was clogged with the manure and urine yet ill The Rag Doll Plagllei, Morales uses dismemberment as a reaction to disease in order to from animals and human beings. Puddles formed in which to [Gregorio'S] absolute demonstrate violence done to the brown body, whereas in Acosta's case, it is a social disease consternation [he] observed children playing happily. When a cart would roll that leads to a cultural severing. Morales shows us that the same social tensions that through the puddles, its wheels stirred up an intolerable rankness. 28 pervaded Acosta's time and novel-perhaps slightly occluded by a more politically correct climate--are in~eed.still present in a transnational/post-national worldview. In The Rag Doll In addition to their lack of hYglene, Gregorio witnesses adults and children glving themselves Plagues, where historlcal events span pre-nationalist to post-nationalist Chicana/o histories, freely over to sexual degeneracy: young men are sodomizing young boys; a scantily cla~ dismemberment becomes an analogy for colonial misrule, miscegenation, hybridity, and woman is openly performing fellatio while others look on; a few men, women, and children ruptures in the national experience. are cleansing their genitalia with water from the dirty ditch; and children are offering to masturbate Gregorio. 29 The people's vulnerability to the disease is reiterated in the ways tJ:at The novel deals with the themes surrounding the diseased and the deteriorating they perform as a community. No one is safe from contamination, and the people of MeX1CO body, a metaphor for what many critics such as Marc Priewe in "Bio-Politics and the have taken to their own defenses. They refuse the established social paradigms and resort to - 43 - - 44 - c~val behavior, and by rejecting the social expectations of good conduct, the poor and marks Mexico's separation from Spanish empire. Book One closes with a sense of optimism diseased sever themselves from hegemonic contro!' for the future of Mexico as Gregorio reflects:

Dismemberment is also enacted through environmental racism and its relation to I labored for a better world, a better Mexico for Monica Marisela. I sensed a new ~e. body politic. ~ Mona is ~ result of pervasive race relations between the Spanish and attitude toward life grow within the people. University and students conversed llldigenous populations that IS perpetuated through empirical discourse and the exploitation about freedom and equality, about rationalism and liberalism. Intellectuals declared of the native body. Maria Herrera-Sobek notes in "Epidemics, Epistemophilia, and Racism: that human beings should no longer be oppressed by the trinity of the king, the Ecological Literary Criticism and The Rag Doll Plaguel' (1995) that the degenerative priest and the landed aristocrat. They proclaimed that governments should be based envir~~en~ is a direct .result of racial inequality and empirical discourse. The corporeal on the consent of the people, that religion should be a private matter, that society explOItation IS twofold III the Spaniards' greedy overdevelopment and urbanization of should no longer be divided into hereditary classes, that a person should rise as high Mexican land, and in their treatment of the natives as beasts of burden who literally carry as talent would carry him. These ideas soon circulated amongst folk. In the streets, them across the river on their shoulders and bear the burden of their exploits. 30 As an in churches, in taverns, I heard the people discuss the future of their country. 33 epidemic that originated in the periphery of Mexico City and soon made its way to the center, La Mona grows to become an apocalyptic force that is blind to race and class Dismemberment through amputation in ''Mexico City" is depicted as a conduit of growth, a diffe~ences and des~bilizes the oppressive ideology of the ruling class. The galvanizing manifestation of what Mikhail Bakhtin identifies as the essence of principal growth, 340r a remams of the coloruzed and colonizers-"stockings of skin, grotesquely swollen, reddish catalyst for radical change. This is also an example of what Morales himself has termed an blood as is sausage" 31--are physical reminders of the pernicious consequences of apocalyptic energy of creation that is necessary in the process of moving forward. 35 Indeed, ambiguous constructions of race and power. we do see that as internal political relations in Mexico improve, so do the social and environmental conditions, but not until after LA Mona takes full course. In its manifestation Violence to bodily integrity is also enacted through aggressive and freakish of our basic primal fears of otherness and death, The Rag Doll Plaglles illustrates how the amputation intended to stave off infection. This method, however, is only a temporary di smemberment and destruction is an integral part of the life cycle. treatment and can only slow the deterioration. It gives patients--at most-nine months to a year more to live. All victims, Spanish and indigenous alike, are forced into an interstitial Book Two: Delhi takes place in the present, and similar to the preceding and final state where ~e uncertain conditions of their existence mirror the future of empire as well as sections of the novel, it also intertwines issues of disease, plague, racism, and class conllict the construCtions of class and race that sustained its ruling power. And like Acosta who also throughout the narrative. Here, however, ecological concerns are expressed through ~e Internalizes an ambiguous national discourse, Gregorio becomes instrumental in the severing threat of the AIDS virus and its effects on Gregorio's girlfriend as well as on the relations of the ethnic body: between the Anglo and Chicana/o communities. In his discussion of AIDS in Elias Miguel Munoz's The Cnalest Peiforlllance, Lima acutely observes, "the issue of writing [is] a . The pungent smell of vinegar made my eyes tear. I counted twenty-five cadavers on contestatory and transgressive practice in the age of AIDS, and the forms of cultural amnesIa the tables in a room occupied by nine students. We moved closer to watch the two it attempts to destruct." 36 In this middle section of the novel, the infected individual is not men perform the amputation of the left arm of the female cadaver. Carefully they brown and poor-but rather Gregorio's Anglo and privileged girlfriend who experiences severed through the museu/lis pectoralis mqjorand sliced down to the humerus bone. social stigmatization from the disease and turns to the Chicana/o body for support and The surgeons then cut around the bone and sawed the arm off. The procedure took sense of community. Disease and dismemberment in this section operates as a precursor for about an hour. The arteria and the vena were knotted and the wound dressed. Father the destructive outcomes in the books conclusion. Antonio congratulated his joyful apprentices for the precise surgery accomplished. The two men were excused. The younger one handed me his scalpel. 32 While "Mexico City" ends with some semblance of hope, the aggressiveness of disease and racism in ''Delhi'' foreshadows deteriorating race relations for the rest of the This scene represents how a fragmented nationalism is a cultural event in Mexican history: novel where dismemberment is a future projection of unresolved tensions between national pres~nt IS Father J ude, ~regorio's personal assistant who represents the indigenous part of and post-national identity politics within the Chicana/o body. Set approximately in 2090, MeX1c~ cultur.e; GregorJo, who represents a European imperial presence; and Father race relations, class divisions, and border identity in "LAMEX" have grown more Antoruo and his cohorts who represent the assimilated aspect of Mexico that adheres to complicated since "Mexico"; it concludes with deteriorating race relations between Anglos, Western rather than traditional medicine. Here, three different facets of Mexican culture Mexicans, and Mexican-Americans in the U.S. The fragmented Chicana/o body, manifested collectively participate in the mutilation of the Mexican body, and while FatherJude's in themes of mutability and life on the desert border, underscores fears about a future lacerated face testifies to how the dismemberment functioned in Mexico's past, Father humanity that privileges hyper-capitalism and homogeneity over traditional values and Antonio's generation of mixed Mexican natives and Spanish emigres signals the critical role subjective identity. of mestizos/os in Mexico's future. Doctor Gregory Revueltas, a third incarnation of the twO central characters in the .Gregorio:s na~onalistic sympathies begin to diminish after he begins performing previous chapters, is involved with a bio-political regime that is trying to control.raging amputations on his patients and comes to identify himself with Mexico rather than with Old epidemics that are plaguing the LAMEX region and are the results of the ecologtcal damage Spain. 0egorio's ~ecision to align himself with Mexico is another implication of the done to the earth. Just as AIDS and cancer threatened earlier populations, an entirely new set crumbling of empJre. Set at the brink of Mexico's nationhood and within the historical of environmental concerns has also brought about a new threat of mutable and spontaneous context of the French Revolution, severing in the beginning of The Rag Doll Plaglles also diseases. Gregory and his partner/lover Gabi Chung are assigned to the liE region to - 45- -46 - investigate a spontaneous virus that has killed over 500 individuals. While race and class to what Foucault terms as "Heterotopia": "disorder in which fragments of a large number of divisions are pronounced in "LAMEX," Gregory finds a cure that transcends race, class, possible orders glitter separately in the dimension, without la.w o.r geometry, ~f the gender, and age and is inherent in the Mexicans whose blood has been genetically mutated to heteroclite ... in such a state, things are laid, placed, arranged In sites so very different fro~ survive the devastating ecological effects that have transpired in the last hundred years. one another that it is impossible to find a place of residence for them." 43 For Mor~es: ~s Gregory's discovery has deleterious effects on his community: Mexicans are commodified interstitial--or bordered-positioning becomes an opportunity to explo~e a dete.mton~~d for .their blood. and beco~e a status ~ym bol for middle and upper-class Anglos, inflaming the consciousness within the Chicana/o identity; it is simultaneously a negation and investigation notion of MeXicans as objects of deSIre, hatred, exploitation, and subjugation. In the end, of essentialist ideologies that have shaped Chicana/ 0 post- nationalis~, as ~ell as a Morales renders a pessimistic view of race relations between Anglos, Mexicans, and consideration of how these tensions will take shape in the future. This ambiguous Mexican-Americans in the U.S. and reconsiders how issues of a1terity in the future are positioning also helps us understand Morales' narr.ati?n of th~ ethnic body. Manue! Martin subject to the abuses of mankind and the loss of humanity. 37 Rodriguez suggests that " [Chicanas/os] are a hybnd In .mutatlon, ra~er than a. static essence" and that racial survival in The Rag Doll PlagueJ IS portrayed In the coming together of This is clearly expressed in the hybrid robotic-human form that Gregory's different worlds and not in the preservation of unchanged ttaditions and customs, but rather colle~es-~e G~bi-are assuming. The body in this hybridized state depicts the diversity in transformation and adaptation. 44 While dismemberment in The Rag Doll Plagues. is enacted of Chic~na! 0 Identity and stresses the threat that an over-reliance on technology and through the metaphor of dismemberment to demonstrate fissured r~ce relatlo~s, It also mech~atlon has .on a global level. Gabi willingly has her arm amputated and replaced with functions as a paradigm for re-evaluating a more flexible understanding of Chicana/o an artifiCIal one to Increase her work production, advance in her field, and gain job security. identity politics--one that avoids positing Chicanas/os as a finished cultur~ product, and While her productivity initially increases, her body eventually rejects the "new" arm as Gabi rather strives to implement a new radical consciousness that embraces the Idea of illtemal succumbs to greed and corruption. The correlation between Gabi's decaying body and her differences and constant growth. ~or~ degeneracy connects her to the destructive forces of La Mona. In this regard, Morales IS dOing something unique with dismemberment in that his narrative posits disease and Crisis and Capitulation .. disability. ~s a cons~que~ce of failing humanism, namely due to the main characters' greed In Borfy lV"orks, Peter Brooks investigates the ways in which natural bodies .are :d ambltl?~. Gabl sacrific~s part of her b~dy and her humanity to fulfill personal ambition. marked, organized, and produced as cultural artifacts. He .co ~siders how. the body IS. In her willingn~ss to sacofice her humaruty she negates her authentic self and freakishly constructed in modern narratives and, in turn, comes to Slgrufy the totaliry of the mind and come~ .to symbolize the dangers of capitalism and the erasure of the subjective identity in an language: "the body furnishes the building blocks of civiliz~tion, an~ eventually .of language exploltlve labor system. Gabi becomes a broken and subjugated body not only because of itself which then takes us away from the body, but always ill a tensIon that reminds us that ~hat she ha~ lo~t, but more importantly because of what she has become--an apparatus to a the rcind and language need to recover the body, as an othemess that is somehow primary to bigger machine Intent on controlling humanity, or more fittingly, an apotheosis of a Big their very definition." 4S He notes that while earlier narrative views of the body demonstrate Brother and postrnodern crisis. 39 a more unified sensibility about the body and its functions-pa.r?cularly in th~ world-turned upside-down Renaissance carnival traditions captured by Rabelrus-the bod~ In ~odem . In ~s sense, my interpretation of Gabi's roboticism is similar to Donna Haraway's literature has become problematic. Fragmented representations of the body ill Chicana/o approXImation of the cyborg that represents "transgressed boundaries, potent fusions and cultural production exemplify this. dangerous possibilities which progressive people might explore as one part of needed' li . a1 . k " 40 And po tic wor. yet, while cyborg imagery can, as Haraway suggests, show us "a way In an iromc rendering, the disorganization of the representative bodies!n The Re~/t out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained our bodies and our tools to ojthe Cockroach People and The Rag Doll PlaglleJ illustrates Homi Bhabha's conception of nation ourselv~s," 41 it fails to do this in Morales' narrative. Instead of symbolically representing a and nationness as "the measure of the liminality of cultural modernity." The fragmented synthesIs ~f cultured, gendered, and political hybridities, Gabi stands as a composite of our body in these texts that deal with Chicana/o nationalism echo Bhabha's and Edward .Said's psycholOgIcal and cultural monsters-America's perception/projection of Otherness in the assertions that modern social cohesion is a myth and that there is "no single e:ll.'planatlon form of what the performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena identifies as the "ethno sending one back immediately to a single origin [... ] j~st ~s th~re ~re no simple discrete . cyborg." formations or social processes." 46 Indeed, the discurSIve lffipli. ca~ons ~f dismemberment In Chicana/o cultural production appear to be fragmented from Its Inceptl~n as pre-contact .. Gabi's faith in an artificial value system is in direct opposition to Gregory's mythology demonstrates. In Tbe Latino Borfy, Lima asser.rs that the narrative tr~arrnent"of the traditional values. Gregory, unwilling to undergo dismemberment for fear of how it will "Latino subject" is conditioned by circumstances resulting from a sense of crIS~S and . call haunt him, is a proponent of basic humanism. His self-awareness and appreciation of hi s attention to the cultural manifestations of historical con£lict that have resulted In publicly ances~ are extensions of his holistic attitude that literally and metaphorically saves him rendered and redressed modes of being both American and Latino [... ] Crisis identi~es are from dismemberment as medical director of the Los Angeles Mexico City Health Corridor: therefore always grounded in the recognition of a capitulation that see.ks an ~'{pl~atlon or "I would not allow myself to be carved up and shaped into what the Directorate considered resolution in and through narrative." 47 In Acosta's and Morales's stones, theu: CrIses of a model optimum efficient doctor. Voices from the past and present warned me not to allow dismemberment both succeed and fail in explaining and resolving violence done to the ~em to deconsa:u~t my.humanity." 42 Unlike Gabi, he views the elective amputation as a Chicana/o body. They successfully illustrate the tensio~s leading ?p t~ tl1~ mom~~ of direc.t threat ~o his Identlt>: and considers it an explicit method of oppression by the crises and demonstrate the necessity of considering theIr cultu .raIlmplicatl~ns, but It ~s only dorrunant .ruling class. While the methods for dismemberment have changed with through the narrative, the act of telling the story, that they hint at a discurSIve resolution. technolOgIcal advancement, the act retains the same metaphoric degree of violence done to the body and places the amputee in a liminal position. Morales likens this ambiguous bearing - 47- - 48- And yet, there is no clear resolution in either novels; however, great possibility vulgar, inferior, undeserving, tasteless, of low qualiry. Mestizo. and without hope. Rascuac~e i.s a sine resounds within these narrative cracks and overall theme of fragmentation. In the larger qua non term to describe his idiosyncratic artitude [... J Zeta IS /lilly pero ml!} rasC1loche: the limit, an sense, to dismember refers to partitioning or div:iding something, and to disembody means extreme. Uan Stavans, Bondido: The Death and ReJllmction of Oscar "Zeta" Acosta (Evanston: to separate or "free" something from its concrete form. While these sundered forms Northwesteco Universiry Press, 2003), 5-6. . . perform as allegorical fissured representations of the Chicana/o body politic, these 13 Stavans writes: "Read attentively, every single piece of fiction and autobIOgraphy by Zeta has him as disembocliments more importantly document the discursive evolution from a rigid set of the sole protagonist. Both his published books are about hi s heroic ~dventures, .and the last ~ook he identity politics to a more heterogeneous, flexible, and thus creative understanding and was drafting before his death also deals with his own ego. He used hterature to mvestlgate his dualiry, acceptance of the contemporary Chicana/o identity and cultural production. If we consider his hyphenated selr' (Ibid, 66). . 14 Manuel Luis Martinez, COllntering the COllntermltllrt: Rertadillgposhvor Diuenl from Jack KerolloC 10 Tomas the root resolvere to mean "loosen," or "release," Acosta's and Morales's dismemberment and RilJtro (Madison: Universiry of Wisconsin Press, 2003),150. . . . disembocliment signify the cathartic and constructive possibilities of fragmentation in IS Hector Calderon, No"otilJts of Grtoter Mexico: EUf!}s on ChlCollo Literary HIStory, Genrt, and Borders political, cultural, and social discourse. (Houston: Universiry of Texas Press, 2005), 5. 16 Raymund Paredes, "Los Angeles From the Bartio: Oscar Z~ta ~costa's The Revoll ofthe Coc~rooch People," in LA. in Fiction: A Collection of Original Essf!}s, ed. DaVld Fme, 209-222. (Albuquerque. Universiry of ew Mexico Press, 1984), 213-214. " Notes: 17 Robert Lee, "Chicanismo Beat Outrider? The Texts and Contexts of Oscar Zeta Acosta, College Literotllrt 27, no.l (2000): 162. . 18 Oscar Acosta, The Revolt of the Cockroach People (New York: Vmtage, 1973), 9. I Jacques Lacan, The LAnglloge of Ihe Self: The Fllnction ofLAnglloge ill P!]ChOOIlOIYtiS, Trans. Anthony Wilder (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1968), 4. 19 Ibid., 3. . 10 20 scar Acosta, Tbe Revolt of the Cockroach People (New York: V~ntage, 1973), 1. 2 Helaine Posner, "Separation Anxiery," Corportol Politics (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992), 22-30. 21 scar Acosta, Tbe Revolt oftbe Cockroach People (New York: Vmtage, 1?73), 9. .. . 3 Margaret E. Owens, Sloges of Dismemberment: The Frogmet/led Botfy ill LAte Medieval and EarlY Modem 22 Julia Kristeva, Powtrs of Horror. A n Euqy 011 Aijechim (Ellropeall PerspechlJts: A Senes III SOCIal Thollght and Drama (Newark: Universiry of Delaware Press, 2005), 12. Margaret Owens argues, "A fascination with Cllltllral Criticism), (New York: Columbia Universiry Press, 198~), 4. corporeal disintegration may very well constitute one of the few foundational and cross-cultural 23 Oscar Acosta, The Revolt ofth e Cockroach People (New York: Vintage, 1973), 104. . features of humaniry. Fears about bodily integriry, after all, are metonymic for a fear of death, an 24 Elizabeth Klaver, Situ ofAlltop!] in Conttll/porary Cllltllrt (New York: SU Y Press, 2005), ~'. undeniable universal" (12). 2S Michel Foucault, The Omer ofTbings. Trans. Robert Hu.rley ~ew York: ~outle~ge, 1 ~91), XVl. . 4 Implicit in Ridge'S description of Murieta's life and death is an inherent fragmentation in his 26 Frede.rick Luis Aldalma, 2006. Spilling the Beolls ill Cbiconolondla: COIIlJtrIohons With ll7nters and Arti.rtJ personal life and cultural assumptions, and also among his own people, who, after he is killed, are left (Austin: Universiry of Texas Press, 2006),181-182. leaderless and displaced. In effect, Murieta is an embodiment of all of the U.S. Southwest that was 27 Alejandro Morales, Tbe Rag Doll Piagiles (Houston: Arte Publico, 1992),22 severed from Mexico, and his sundered form parallels the way people of Mexican decent were 28 Ibid., 26. generally received by the dominant Anglo-American culture. 29 Ibid., 28. . . . . al Li C . . . d 5 In American Sensations: Closs, E"'pirt, and the Prodllction of Poplllar Cllltllrt, Streeby analyzes how dime 30 Marla Herrera-Sobek, "Epidemics, Epistemophilia, and Raosm: EcolOgIC terary rltlosm an novels popular in the mid-to-late nineteenth century signify racial and social complexities in relation Tbe Rag Doll Ploglles," TbeBilillgllolReview20, no. 3 (1995):100-~02. to the U.S.-Mexican War and the construction of nineteenth-century empire and what these texts 31Alejandro Morales, Tbe Rag Doll Ploglles (Houston: Arte Publico, 1992), 27. reveal about "race, nativism, labor, politics, and popular and mass culture in the United States." 32 Ibid. 38 Streeby, Shelley, American Set/sotions: Class, Empirt, and the Prodllction ofPoplllor Cllltllrt (Berkeley and Los 33Aleja~dro Morales, The Rag Doll Plaglles (Houston: Arte Publico, 1992), ~2. . .. Angeles: Universiry of California Press, 2002), xi. 34 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelois olld His 1170rld. Trans. Helene Iswolsky. Bloommgton: Indiana Uruverslry 6Jesse Aleman further argues that Murieta's decapitation is still very present in current Chicana/o Press, 1984), 26. . .., d A . (A '. 35 Frederick Luis AldaJrna, ill ustln. literature. While Murieta is heroicized for his defiance towards dominant Anglo-American law and Spilling the Beolls Chicollolondlo: COIIlJtrsoholls With Wntm all rti.rls sociery and signifies early Mexican-American protest, his decapitation also shows how Murieta is a Universiry of Texas Press, 2006), 181 -182. . .. 36 Lazaro Lima, (New York. relevant embodiment of Chicana/o history. In addition, he is also a projection of future cultural Tbe LAh'lIo Botfy: Crisis ideJItitiesill AII/ericoll Literary olld Cllltllrol Mell/ory fragmentation within the Chicana/o communiry. Jesse Aleman, "Assimilation and the Decapitated NYU Press, 2007), 141. . . . ., C . . . d 37 Maria Herrera-Sobek, "Epidemics, EpistemophIlia, and Raosm: Ecological Literary ntlosm an Body Politic in The Uft and Advenllll"tJ ofJoaqll/n Mllrieto," Arizollo QllorterlY 60, no. 1 (2004): 74. 7Jes se Aleman, "The Ethnic in the Canon; or, On Finding Santa Anna's Wooden Leg, MELUS 29, Tbe Rag Doll Ploglles," The Bilillgllol Review 20, no. 3 (1995):106. no. 3-4 (2004): 175. 38 Ibid., 107 US li ' 8 Ibid., 63. 39 This same metaphor of pervasive hyper - mechani~a.tion can a~so be applied to the .. po oes 9 In "Reading the COrpllS Delecll' in The LAtino Botfy, Lima analyzes Tomas aimed towards Mexican immigrants and border polioes. ee Pnewe (405~. . .,. 40 Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Sooalist-Femuusm m the Late Rivera's .. .And the Earth Did Not Devollr Him (1971) as one of "the most important texts written and Twentieth Century," in Simiolls, 0borgs, olld WOII/eJI (New York: Routledge, 1991), 154. recovered before the civil rights apogee of the 1960s and 1970s" (17). In my view, Acosta's Revolt is connected---'olnd indeed indebted-to this body. 41 Ibid., 181. 42 Alejandro Morales, The Rag Doll Plaglles (Houston: Acte Publico, 1992),143. . ... 10 Manuel Luis Martinez, COlllltering the COllntermltllre: Rereodingposhvor Diue/lt fro", Jock Kerolloc to TOil/OS Rivero (Madison: Universiry of Wisconsin Press, 2003), 173. 43 Michel Foucault, Tbe OmerofTbillgs. Trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Routledge, 1991),. X.VUl • • 44 Manuel M. Martin-Rodriguez, "The Global Border: Transnationalism and Cultural Hybndism 10 II Tomas Ybarra-Frausto, "Rasquachismo, a Chicano Sensibiliry," in ChicolloArt: Ruistonce olld A./fim/otion, 1965-1985, eds. Richard Griswold del Castillo, Teresa McKenna, and Yvonne Yarbro Alejandro Morales's Tbe Rag Doll Pltlf,lIes," The Bilillf,lIol Review 20, .no.3 ( 199~): 94. ., Bejarano (Los Angeles: Universiry of California Press, 1991), 156. 45 Peter Brooks 1993 Botfy Il70rk: Ol?jects of Desirt ill Modem Non'O/71Jt (Cambndge: Harvard UruveCSlry 12 As Uan Stavans outs it, "He is, was, and will always be considered by the Anglo bourgeoisie as Press, 1993), xii-xiii. - 49- - 50 - 46 Edward Said, Pos/modem Cllllllre. London: Pluto, 1983),145. Works Cited: 47 Lazaro Lima, The utiI/O Botfy: CriJiJ Identities ill Anmicall Ulerary alld Cllllllral Memory (New York: NYU Press, 2007), 6. Acosta, Oscar Zeta. The Autobiography ofa BroJlln Buffalo. ew York: Vintage, 1972. ___ . The Revolt ofth e Cockroach People. New York: Vintage, 1973.

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Lima, Lazaro. The LatillO Body: Crisis Identities ill AJllelican Literary alld Cultlll'Ol Mef/lory. ew York: NYU Press, 2007.

- 51 - - 52 - Marrin-Rodriguez, Manuel M. "The Global Border: Transnationalism and Cultural Wild minds searching Hybridism in Alejandro Morales's The Rog Doll Plagues." The Bilingllal Review 20, no.3 (1995): earfy scholars groping in the gap 86-98. - Joy Denise Scott and Jane Grellier Martinez, Manuel Luis. COlmten"ng the Countereulture: RereadillgposhlJar Dissent from Jack KerrJllac to Tomds Rivera. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003.

Morales, Alejandro. "Dynamic Identities in Heterotopia." In Alejandro Morales: Fiction Past, JOY .. 009)· hi h This paper builds on an earlier co-constructed narraove (Grelli.er and Scott 2 , 10 ~ C Present, and Future Petject, ed. Jose Antonio Gurpegui, 14-27. Tempe: Bilingual Review/Press, Jane and I articulate our struggle as beginning researchers seeking to become auth~no~, 1996. ethical auto-ethnographers. A year later, we find ourselves as 'in-betweeners' ~op~g ~ the. --. The Rog Doll Plagues. Houston: Arte Publico, 1992. gap between self and other, and seeking to understand its nature and our posJOonality 10 this space. Owens, Margaret E. Stages ojDisl1mnberment: The Fragmetlted B04J in LAte Medieval and EarlY Modern Drama. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. JANE The two of us wrote Anti-Oediplls together. Since each of us was several, there was Paredes, Raymund. "Los Angeles From the Barrio: Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt oj the already quite a crowd. Cockroach People." In LA. ill Fictioll: A Collectioll ojOn"ginal Em!}s, dd. David Fine, 209 (Deleuze and Guattari 1987,3) 222. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984. The writings of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), particularly their concept of rhizomes, provide Posner, Helaine, ed. "Separation Anxiety." Cotporeal Politics. Cambridge: Massachusetts strong frames for the work that Joy and I do, both tog~ther and separately. We each choose Institute of Technology: 22-30, 1992. to speak in a range of voices - the voice of the acaderruc, the student, the te~cher, the att curator, the wild explorer, the reflector, the life story writer, and so on - which w~ see as Priewe, Marc. ''Bio-Politics and the ContamiNation of the Body in Alejandro Morales's The equally valid and valuable. We also evoke other people's voices, both verbal and VIsual, Rog Doll Phgues." MELUS 29, no. 3-4 (2004): 397-412. intettwining them all in our exploration. For these reasons we choose to label our own voices throughout this piece, rather than to try to cr~te a. disembodied voice th~t speaks for Rodriguez, Joe D. "Oscar Zeta Acosta." In Dictionary ojIJterary Biograpf?y: Chicano lI:7n"ters, eds. both of us - both and neither. Sometimes we engage 10 dialogue; at others a senes of Francisco A. Lomeli and Carl R. Shirley, 3-10. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989. interleaved monologues. Said, Edward. Postmodem Culture. London: Pluto, 1983. In this paper Joy and I refer from time to time to our separa~e, ongoing auto-ethno~phic. projects, as we grope our way to a deeper, richer unders~?IDg of the s~f-other r~aoonship. Saldivar, Ramon. Chicano Narrative: the Dialectics oj Difference. Madison: University of Wisconsin My research involves working with first-year srudent paroC1p~ts at .C~ Uruverslty, . Press, 1990. listening to their voices as they reflect on their learning ~~rlences 10 the.lr early months 10 the institution. I also coordinate the first-year Commurucaoons Program 10 the Fa~ult:y of Stavans, nan. Bandido: The Death and Resurrection ojOscar 'Zeta" Acosta. Evanston: Humanities at Curtin, which provides credit-bearing compulsory ~ts ~ commurucaOons Northwestern University Press, 2003. Qabelled in other universities as Composition, Rheto.ric or Acaderruc !iteracy programs~ ~o a range of first-year srudents outside the school to which I belong: While much of the \VrIoog Streeby, Shelley. Amen"can Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Productioll ojPopular Culture. Berkeley I am currently doing centres on the srudents' voices, my. ow~ vOIces .as teacher, researcher, and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002. srudent and member of the institution are more central 10 this co-wotren paper.

Uribe, Maria Victoria. "Dismembering and Expelling: Semantics of Political Terror in The image that underpins my auto-ethnographic writing is that of a choral br~d, in which Colombia." Popular Culture 16 (2004): 79-95. the voices of students, teachers, and the institution interweave in harmony, dissonance and cacophony, blending with and cutting across my own voices. Valdez, Luis. Mummified Deer and Other Plqys. Houston: Arte Publico, 2005. JOY . Ybarra-Frausto, Tomas. "Rasquachismo, a Chicano Sensibility." In ChicanoArl: Resistallce alld For me the image is one of undertaking embroidery as a form of r1ru~. . Ajjimlatiol1, 1965-1985, ed. Richard Griswold del Castillo, Teresa McKenna, and Yvonne Ritual as the craft of writing - to word stitch the multiple threads of lived experience to create new ways of thinking and being and challenge the binary constructs of eastern and Yarbro Bejarano. ~s Angeles: Wight Art Gallery, 155-62. Los Angeles: University of western. California Press, 1991. Ritual as a solitary pursuit - embroidering a space for self-reflectio? . Ritual as cultural learning - a novice involved in a performance of Intercultural translaoon.

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