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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 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure Part of the Latin American Languages and Societies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. 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
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