Matching Items (6)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Immigrants in literature
- All Subjects: Hispanic American Studies
- All Subjects: Violence in literature
- Creators: Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús
- 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 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
This dissertation is a comparative study of three contemporary women filmmakers: Puerto Rican Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Chicana director Lourdes Portillo, and Brazilian director Helena Solberg. Informed by transnational theory, politics of location, feminism on the border, and approaches to documentary filmmaking, the study examines three filmic texts: Brincando el charco: Portrait of a Puerto Rican (1994), The Devil Never Sleeps/El diablo nunca duerme (1994), and Carmen Miranda: Bananas Is My Business (1994). Each film is narrated by a female voice who juxtaposes her personal and transnational identity with history to tell her migration story before and after returning to her country of origin. An objective of the study is to demonstrate how the film directors vis-á-vis their female protagonists, configure a United States Latina transnational imaginary to position their female protagonists and themselves as female directors and as active social agents. Further, the dissertation explores how the filmmakers construct, utilizing the cinematographic apparatus, specific forms of resistance to confront certain oppressive forms. The theoretical framework proposes that transnational documentary filmmaking offers specific contestatory representations and makes possible the opening of parallel spaces in order to allow for a transformation from multiple perspectives. Through the utilization of specific techniques such as archival footage, the three directors focus on historical biographies. Further, they make use of experimental filmmaking and, in particular, the transnational documentary to deconstruct hegemonic discourses. Lastly, transnational cinema is valued as a field for cultural renegotiating and as a result, the documentary filmmakers in this study are able to reconfigure a transnational imaginary and propose an alternative discourse about history, sexuality, family structures, and gender relations. In sum, my dissertation contributes to Chicana/o and U.S. Latina/o, American Literature, and other Ethnic Literatures by focusing on migration, acculturation, and multicultural dialogue.
ContributorsValenzuela Pulido, Norma A (Author) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W. (Committee member) / Mcelroy, Isis (Committee member) / Sanchez, Marta (Committee member) / Elenes, C. Alejandra (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Yuan Mei 袁枚 (1716-97) is often thought of as a rebellious figure within the eighteenth-century intellectual and literary landscape. His perceived rejection of nearly all aspects of Confucian values was so extreme that he was even dubbed a "sinner against the teachings of Confucius." This thesis examines six stories within Yuan Mei's Zi buyu 子不語 (What Confucius Did Not Talk About) and, through close reading, shows how Yuan Mei utilizes each foreign group's physical traits and their ability to verbally and/or ethically communicate with the Chinese protagonist, in order to reflect their adherence to Confucian values and acceptance of Chinese imperial authority to arrange them along a spectrum of humanness that reflects the Chinese-foreign distinction. Furthermore, by examining each story in their historical and literary contexts, it is discovered that nearly every foreign group portrayed in Zi buyu is based on historical groups that actually existed on the periphery of the Qing empire, and that the different degrees of foreignness of each subject reflect each historical foreign group's acquiescence to or rebellion against the imperial authority of the Qing empire. Contrary to commonly held opinions, Yuan Mei's negotiation of foreignness demonstrates his own deep subscription to Confucian ethics and adherence to imperial order.
ContributorsCampos, Miles (Author) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Thesis advisor) / Oh, Young Kyun (Committee member) / West, Stephen H. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
If different societies encode their communication according to their socio-historical context, it makes sense to postulate that satire resides in the no-man's-land that sprawls between what an individual claims to be and the reality revealed by his actions. Thus, satirical caricature, as graphic and scenic art, results in the indictment of collective or individual vices through irony, sarcasm and farce. This study examines the Spanish-American War of 1898, and the "disaster" brought about by the defeat of Spain and the loss of its colonial empire, through the lens of the caricatures published by three satirical magazines—Don Quijote (Madrid), La Campana de Gracia (Barcelona) y El Hijo de El Ahuizote (Mexico)—between January and December, 1898. These magazines provide a many-splendored set of facets depicting a scathing and hard-hitting campaign supporting the war and the demonization, management, and suppression of the other through the use of symbols. While in the peninsular press Spain is represented as a raging bull, a lion, or a virgin maiden, Cuba as an empty container or a black and ignorant peasant and the United States as imperialist pigs and a treacherous thieves, the Mexican magazine views the Spanish as the usurpers, pirates and traitors, the United States as liberator, and the annexed populations as respectable and noble societies to be freed from the Spanish colonial yoke.
Whether motivated by internal ideological confrontations or in opposition to external threats, the use of graphic representation as a political weapon considerably enriches the meaning of symbols. Satirical caricature represents a categorical instrument for the definition of national identity. The creation and dissemination of unified stereotypes—images assumed to be identical for all recipients—generates the development of a powerful national imaginary, both abstract and highly accessible to the reader, fomenting the manufacture of "public opinion". It is precisely here where its great semiotic power lies, because caricature achieves its maximum expression when it veers toward the symbolic rather than the discursive, delivering its content in an abstract and unlimited fashion, and spreading its effects through time and all the different socio-cultural contexts it may find along the way.
Whether motivated by internal ideological confrontations or in opposition to external threats, the use of graphic representation as a political weapon considerably enriches the meaning of symbols. Satirical caricature represents a categorical instrument for the definition of national identity. The creation and dissemination of unified stereotypes—images assumed to be identical for all recipients—generates the development of a powerful national imaginary, both abstract and highly accessible to the reader, fomenting the manufacture of "public opinion". It is precisely here where its great semiotic power lies, because caricature achieves its maximum expression when it veers toward the symbolic rather than the discursive, delivering its content in an abstract and unlimited fashion, and spreading its effects through time and all the different socio-cultural contexts it may find along the way.
ContributorsGimeno Robles, Jorge (Author) / Foster, David William (Thesis advisor) / Gil-Osle, Juan Pablo (Committee member) / Hernández-G, Manuel De Jesús (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
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