Michigan State University
2008
266 pages
Publication Number: AAT 3331903
ISBN: 9780549837800
Emron Lee Esplin, Assistant Professor of English and American Studies
Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, Georgia
A Dissertation Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of English
This dissertation is an endeavor in inter-American literary criticism with three primary arguments. First, I argue that the affinities and differences between the histories of the U.S. South and Mexico require us to redefine the terms “America” and “American” according to their original hemispheric context and to adopt a transnational approach when studying American literature. Second, I claim that the ways in which race and racial mixture are viewed in the Americas—specifically, the discourse of miscegenation in the United States and the discourse of mestizaje in Mexico–are national not natural. These discourses are connected to lengthy colonial and national histories and to specific moments of crisis in the formation of U.S. and Mexican national identities that took place during the U.S. Civil War and the Mexican Revolution. Third, I argue that William Faulkner and Carlos Fuentes participate in these discourses of racial mixture when their novels both replicate and challenge the essentialisms of miscegenation and mestizaje, respectively.
In my introduction, I develop a historiographic approach to inter-American literary studies that I follow in chapter one by laying the historical groundwork for comparing the U.S. Civil War to the Mexican Revolution and in chapter two by examining how the discourses of miscegenation and mestizaje which grew out of these conflicts disparately favor(ed) whiteness–miscegenation through overt segregation and mestizaje through public praise for racial mixture and private desires for assimilation. Chapter three explores how Faulkner’s Light in August, Absalom, Absalom! , and Go Down, Moses and Fuentes’ La muerte de Artemio Cruz and Gringo viejo repeat the essentialist underpinnings of miscegenation and mestizaje by describing so-called racially mixed characters as fragments. Chapter four examines how Light in August and Gringo viejo challenge the discourses by assigning violence to whiteness. Chapter five analyzes how Light in August and La muerte de Artemio Cruz offer fictional portrayals of both miscegenation’s and mestizaje’s erasure of Mexico’s African past. I conclude the project by offering a critique of current hybridity theory and by arguing that Go Down, Moses and La muerte de Artemio Cruz demonstrate the impossibility of positive hybridity.
Table of Contents
- INTRODUCTION: METHODS FOR INTER-AMERICAN LITERARY STUDIES
- CHAPTER 1: WAR IN THE TWO SOUTHS: PRESENT PASTS AND CIVIL WAR IN THE U.S. SOUTH AND MEXICO
- CHAPTER 2: DISCOURSES OF RACIAL MIXTURE BORN IN CIVIL WAR: CREATING THE NATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO
- CHAPTER 3: RACIAL MIXTURE AS FRAGMENTATION
- CHAPTER 4: ANCESTRY, BLOOD, AND THE VIOLENCE OF THE WHITE FATHERS
- CHAPTER 5: BLACK, MEXICAN, AND BLACK MEXICAN
- CONCLUSION: POSITIVE HYBRIDITY?
- WORKS CITED
Purchase the dissertation here.