Matching Items (6)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Theater
- All Subjects: Violence in literature
- Creators: Foster, David W
- Status: Published
Description
ABSTRACT This thesis aims to demonstrate the validity of political violence in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives as a reflection of the sociopolitical situation of immigrants and their descendants in the United States (U.S.). The thesis explores the various ways in which contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives present the political violence in the U.S. towards Mexican and Peruvian immigrants and Chicanos and Peruvian Americans examining the intersections that exist between the resistance and violence discourses and its sociopolitical consequences. Although the topic of political violence has been previously studied in U.S. and Latin American narratives throughout its history, its analysis has been insufficiently explored as far as contemporary narratives of the XXI century are concerned. With this in mind, two texts will be used to study this discourse of violence in Chicano and Peruvian American literature: Alejandro Morales' "Pequeña nación" (2005) and Daniel Alarcón's "Guerra en la penumbra" (2005). The thesis examines the immigrant as a center of discourse exploring the conflict between them and the institutions or groups in power that instigate this political violence. The first chapter covers the socio historical background regarding Mexican and Peruvian migration flows to the United States in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The second chapter introduces "The Triangle of Violence" proposed by Norwegian mathematician and sociologist Johan Galtung as the basis for the theoretical framework and approach of this analysis. Chapter three analyzes the Chicano short story "Pequeña nación" by Alejandro Morales. The analysis of the Peruvian American short story "Guerra en la penumbra" by Daniel Alarcón follows in chapter four. The conclusion emphasizes the problem of political violence experienced by immigrants in the U.S. in contemporary Chicano and Peruvian American narratives and possible solutions contained therein, protesting a problem that can hinder immigration policy reforms and the defense of human rights.
ContributorsSifuentes, Ana (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / García-Fernández, Carlos J. (Thesis advisor) / Alarcon, Justo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
In this dissertation I use Henri Lefebvre's concept of the production of social space to study how political theatre companies and artists in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, appropriate and resignify, through performance, their current social space as a strategy to contest Puerto Rico's neoliberal state policies. As Lefebvre suggests, modern industrial cities like San Juan maintain hegemonic power relations through spatial practices, processes through which users and inhabitants of the city conceive, perceive and live space. Lefebvre further suggests that for social justice to be possible, space must be resignified in ways that expose otherwise invisibilized struggles for social belonging and differentiation. I argue that theatrical performance, by staging various social conflicts and contradictions between the dominating space and the appropriating space, can produce new "performance cartographies" through which its audiences – in large part disenfranchised from the neoliberal processes so celebrated elsewhere on the island – may find ways to resignify space or envision new spaces for social justice on their own behalf. Specifically, I examine five theatre groups and artists from oppressed sectors in San Juan, whose work is to various degrees in opposition to neoliberalism, to reveal how both their artistic and quotidian performances might be resignifying space toward these ends. How does the work of Agua, Sol y Sereno, Y no había luz, Teatro Breve, Deborah Hunt and Tito Kayak strategically claim or appropriate space? What kind of knowledges emerge from these spatial tactics, and how are they helping envision new forms of living and social justice in the city?
ContributorsGonzález, Jorge (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
In the midst of historical ruptures and transfiguration caused by a globalization that has restructured new realities marked by violence, Central American and Chicanos realities have come into contact in a global space such the United States. Thus, the interdependence between these two cultures is so close that the literary influences are unavoidable. We argue that there is an asymmetrical relationship in the narrative of globalization, which sets new unpublished orders and generates perceptions of reality. The ideological dimensions of globalization that have caused systemic violence can be traced through military interventions and economic ventures. Thus, the subject of our research is assumed as a literary whole within certain social facts, i.e., as a symbolic aspect of the processes of violence within a culture undermined by globalization. Hence, in using theory of violence by Slavoj Ziek and theory of globalization by Manuel Castells, Tony Shirato, Jenn Webb, James Petra, and Henry Veltmeyer, we explore the narrative and criticism of U.S-Central Americans and Chicano in order to expose the forces of systemic violence that globalization produces. Our results show that, historically, globalization has formulated epistemologies via violence for Chicanos and U.S-Central Americans; such violence marks both groups, allowing for solidarity, through discursive practices of resistance, to take place in the textual space as well as in the real world. Such solidarity disrupts the textual borders, creating a dialogue of mutual understanding.
ContributorsEscobar, Mario A (Author) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Thesis advisor) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Menjivar, Cecilia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Drawing from Foucault's notion of heterotopias, my dissertation identifies and examines three distinct but related events that resignified (re-imagined) Chile during 2010, the year of its Bicentenary, namely: the Rescue of the 33 Miners trapped in the San José mine, the Chilean Military Parade performed in celebration of Chilean Independence, and the Mapuche Hunger Strike of 32 indigenous people accused of terrorism by the Chilean State. My central hypothesis states that these three events constitute heterotopias with strong performative components that, by enacting a utopian and a dystopian nation, denounce the flaws of Chilean society. I understand heterotopias as those recursive systems that invert, perfect or contest the society they mirror. In other words: heterotopias are discursive constructions and material manifestations of social relations that dispute, support, or distort cultural assumptions, structures, and practices currently operating in the representational spaces of a given society. In addition to following the six heterotopological principles formulated by Foucault, these case studies have performance as the central constituent that defines their specificity and brings the heterotopias into existence. Due to the performative nature of these heterotopias, I have come to call them performance heterotopias, that is, sets of behaviors that enact utopias in the historical world, the place in which we live, the site in which "the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs," as Foucault puts it. Here, performance would act as the interface, the point of interaction, and suture between the conceived, the perceived and the representational spaces each heterotopia articulates. Thus, a performance heterotopia would be a particular type of heterotopia which is enacted through performance. A relevant aspect that emerged from my research is that heterotopic places not only mirror, contest, and compensate their own host society, but also refer to, and intersect with other contemporaneous heterotopias enacted in that society. In my conclusion I suggest that such interactions also happen between heterotopias that emerge in different countries and cultures. If so, the mapping of utopias enacted in the macro socio geographies of Latin American countries could offer new perspectives to understand the sociopolitical processes that are underway in the region.
ContributorsBravo Goldsmith, Néstor (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Melo, Carla (Committee member) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
En contexto del desarrollo urbano culturalmente acrítico, el cual con la gentrificación amenaza el bienestar del barrio y sus habitantes, esta disertación interpreta la dialéctica barrioización y barriología como atmósfera dramática en la dramaturgia chicana. Como tropo de supervivencia social y ontológica en la producción cultural chicana, la recurrencia literaria del barrio también queda reflejada en la temática y las formas de numerosas obras de teatro chicano. De tal modo, el análisis de la conciencia espacial chicana en Bernabé (1971) y Heroes and Saints (1994) revela la significancia de un sentido de lugar colectivo y sitúa esta interpretación dramática del barrio en torno al matiz ideológico de la evolución de la conciencia espacial chicana. Manifestada como una dialéctica entre muerte y vida social y ontológica, la representación y representatividad del barrio en La trampa sin salida (1973), Water and Power (2009) y A Drunkard’s Tale of Melted Wings and Memories (2016) ilustra el efecto dramático de la dialéctica entre barrioización y barriología. Mientras algunos estudios precedentes a este han explorado la espacialidad chicana y el significado sociocultural del barrio, esta disertación es la primera en demonstrar concomitantemente la función temática y semiótica del barrio en la configuración de la atmósfera dramática en el teatro chicano. Más aún, la intersección entre barrio, espacio social y teatro no solo revelan la significancia semiótica de la atmósfera dramática, si no que también sostienen la urgencia de fomentar la (re)producción socioespacial urbana históricamente informada y culturalmente crítica.
ContributorsGómez-Becerra, José Juan (Author) / Rosales, Jesus (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Urioste-Azcorra, Carmen (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Se examinan desde una perspectiva autobiográfica las obras de Yolanda Cruz, Saúl Cuevas, Víctor Fuentes, John Leguizamo, Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Roberto Quesada, y Esmeralda Santiago bajo los filtros de los espacios creados por la migración y/o el exilio, para lo cual se toma en cuenta el bagaje cultural de objetos que cada uno de estos autores aporta en el panorama cultural euiberolatino en los Estados Unidos. Para su análisis crítico, se consideran en un primer plano el pensamiento en Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation, and the Spatial Histories of Modernity (2002) de Phillip Wegner sobre las comunidades imaginarias creadas desde los espacios utópicos que se convierten en realidad desde un enfoque sociohistórico en un ambiente de Estado moderno. Asimismo, se interpreta la ideología como Misplaced Objects; Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas (2009) de Silvia Spitta sobre los objetos desubicados y la transformación que conlleva con dicho movimiento vía el desplazamiento en los espacios de migración y exilio de los autores en este estudio. Se consideran ciertas similares aportaciones existentes como Hispanic New York: A Sourcebook (2010) de Claudio Iván Remeseira cuyo estudio particular enfoca a unos habitantes euiberolatinos de la gran urbe neoyorquina. Para redondear el pensamiento crítico se ha incluido la obra Lugares decoloniales: Espacios de intervención en las Américas (2008), editada por Ramón Grosfoguel y Roberto Almanza Hernández. Este enfoque funciona como el marco crítico para la perspectiva de nuestro texto que examina los bagajes culturales de las regiones como Zacatecas-Durango y Oaxaca, México; La Habana, Cuba; Santurce, Puerto Rico; Olanchito, Honduras; Bogotá, Colombia y Madrid, España y hasta los de sus nuevos espacios en Phoenix, Los Ángeles, Miami-Chapel Hill, Manhattan, Queens y Santa Bárbara, en los Estados Unidos y más allá en Latinoamérica, Europa y África.
ContributorsVargas, Daniel Minerbi (Author) / Hernández-G., Manuel J (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Rosales, Jesus (Committee member) / Garcia-Fernandez, Carlos J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015