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Books by Abraham Acosta
"Thresholds of Illiteracy” is a study on the notion of resistance in Latin America. It is a time... more "Thresholds of Illiteracy” is a study on the notion of resistance in Latin America. It is a timely examination and critique of theories of postcoloniality, cultural difference, and subalternity and their impact on contemporary Latin American cultural discourse and history. This book contends that in recent years the idea of resistance has become saturated through hasty and imprecise usage, leaving a concept that retains little of its truly political meaning, function, and force, and which demands serious revision if it is to continue to be analytically useful, and continue to inspire people’s struggle for freedom. The purpose of this book is to propose a critical and historical reevaluation of Latin American theories and narratives of resistance from the last 40 years, and to advance a new more critical approach to understanding acts or moments of antagonism which I am calling “illiteracy.” I develop and employ illiteracy as an analytic principle and critical category which I use to read diverse forms of cultural production and whose unique advantage is to unconceal a far more radical problematization of politics, speech, and resistance in Latin America than previously held. This book is organized as a series of literary and cultural analyses of internationally-recognized postcolonial narratives in Latin America: such as the Indigenismo in Peru, Testimonio in Central America and Cuba, the neo-Zapatista [EZLN] uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, and the immigration crisis at the US/Mexico border. Through a critical examination of the “illiterate” effects and contradictions at work in these resistant narratives, “Thresholds” goes beyond current theories of culture and politics to reveal radically unpredictable, and unwieldy, forms of antagonism which advance the possibility for an ever more democratic model of cultural analysis.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Thresholds of Illiteracy, or the Deadlock of Resistance in Latin America
Chapter 2: Other Perus: Colono Insurrection and the Limits of Indigenista Narrative
Chapter 3: Secrets Even to Herself: Testimonio, Illiteracy, and the Grammar of Restitution
Chapter 4: Silence, Subalternity, the EZLN, and the Egalitarian Contingency
Chapter 5: Hinging on Exclusion and Exception: Bare Life at the US/Mexico Border
Afterword
Notes / Works Cited / Index"
Articles by Abraham Acosta
Journal of Commonwealth & Postcolonial Studies, 2018
During the 1990s, various disciplinary debates took place within Latin Americanist circles regard... more During the 1990s, various disciplinary debates took place within Latin Americanist circles regarding whether Latin America indeed falls under the category of the postcolonial. Many argue that Latin America, being a former Spanish colony, has, ultimately, very little in common with the conditions and legacies of colonization as elaborated by British and French postcolonial critics and theorists. These discussions went on for years, and in many ways have never ceased. As a result of these rather unresolved debates Latin America never fully obtained critically as a site of postcolonial inquiry. Instead, the field came to see what is now known as decolonial theory, and not postcolonial thought, emerge over the past twenty years as an increasingly prominent analytic approach for the study of Latin America's colonial legacies. Defined in opposition to postcolonialism, which many Latin Americanist critics found to be still too imbedded within the Western critical tradition, "Decoloniality" or the "decolonial option" came to serve as the name for a theoretico-political paradigm promoting indigenous, aboriginal, or other previously colonized and relegated modes of knowledge as a means to challenge Western Reason's claim to universality. Walter Mignolo differentiates between the two in the following way, "decolonial thinking is differentiated from postcolonial theory or postcolonial studies in that the genealogy of these are located in French post-structuralism more than in the dense history of planetary decolonial thinking ("Epistemic Disobedience" 46). While this distinction is carried out somewhat tautologically, the point made is that while postcolonial theory continues to rely heavily on certain strands of post-structural thought, decoloniality claims not to. Through concepts such as border thinking, delinking (Walter Mignolo), transm odernity (Enrique Dussel), and the coloniality of pow er (Anibal Quijano) decoloniality positions itself as a uniquely non-eurocentric critical tradition that diverges from and aims to surpass other prominent theoretical models such as Marxism, deconstruction, as well as postcolonial theory itself. Within various fields and disciplines, ranging from literary and cultural studies to history and anthropology, the decolonial option has become established as a methodological platform and has been heralded by some as a revolutionary paradigm for the cultural and political emancipation of formerly colonized cultures from western modes of knowledge and power.
NEW APPROACHES TO LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: Culture and Power. Edited by Juan Poblete. Routledge (2... more NEW APPROACHES TO LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: Culture and Power. Edited by Juan Poblete. Routledge (2018).
Critical Multilingualism Studies 2:1 (2014): 20-37, 2014
This essay reflects on the potential meanings of 'critical multilingualism studies' in an era of ... more This essay reflects on the potential meanings of 'critical multilingualism studies' in an era of unparalleled cultural and economic porosity, exploring how such a scholarly and theoretical field might reimagine inter-and multilingual inquiry in the Humanities, Comparative Literature, Latin American Studies, critical theory, and second language acquisition. Applying insights from interrogates the ideological distinction between 'monolingual signification' and 'translational signification,' between universalist abstractions and the specific language(s) from which they issue. Taking the Zapatista uprisings of 1994 as a case study, Acosta then turns to how the ascription 'monolingual' has been mobilized in Mexican public discourse.
CR: New Centennial Review, 13:2 (203-222), 2013
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Aug 1, 2010
Dispositio/n, Jan 1, 2005
Reviews by Abraham Acosta
Exceedingly rare is the book that effects a marked shift in the terms and nature of existing disc... more Exceedingly rare is the book that effects a marked shift in the terms and nature of existing disciplinary debates. Even more rare is the book that evinces such critical possibilities with--simply and only--a collection of close, rigorous, readings of historical and narrative texts. The present book will no doubt be counted among these.
"Thresholds of Illiteracy” is a study on the notion of resistance in Latin America. It is a time... more "Thresholds of Illiteracy” is a study on the notion of resistance in Latin America. It is a timely examination and critique of theories of postcoloniality, cultural difference, and subalternity and their impact on contemporary Latin American cultural discourse and history. This book contends that in recent years the idea of resistance has become saturated through hasty and imprecise usage, leaving a concept that retains little of its truly political meaning, function, and force, and which demands serious revision if it is to continue to be analytically useful, and continue to inspire people’s struggle for freedom. The purpose of this book is to propose a critical and historical reevaluation of Latin American theories and narratives of resistance from the last 40 years, and to advance a new more critical approach to understanding acts or moments of antagonism which I am calling “illiteracy.” I develop and employ illiteracy as an analytic principle and critical category which I use to read diverse forms of cultural production and whose unique advantage is to unconceal a far more radical problematization of politics, speech, and resistance in Latin America than previously held. This book is organized as a series of literary and cultural analyses of internationally-recognized postcolonial narratives in Latin America: such as the Indigenismo in Peru, Testimonio in Central America and Cuba, the neo-Zapatista [EZLN] uprising in Chiapas, Mexico, and the immigration crisis at the US/Mexico border. Through a critical examination of the “illiterate” effects and contradictions at work in these resistant narratives, “Thresholds” goes beyond current theories of culture and politics to reveal radically unpredictable, and unwieldy, forms of antagonism which advance the possibility for an ever more democratic model of cultural analysis.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Thresholds of Illiteracy, or the Deadlock of Resistance in Latin America
Chapter 2: Other Perus: Colono Insurrection and the Limits of Indigenista Narrative
Chapter 3: Secrets Even to Herself: Testimonio, Illiteracy, and the Grammar of Restitution
Chapter 4: Silence, Subalternity, the EZLN, and the Egalitarian Contingency
Chapter 5: Hinging on Exclusion and Exception: Bare Life at the US/Mexico Border
Afterword
Notes / Works Cited / Index"
Journal of Commonwealth & Postcolonial Studies, 2018
During the 1990s, various disciplinary debates took place within Latin Americanist circles regard... more During the 1990s, various disciplinary debates took place within Latin Americanist circles regarding whether Latin America indeed falls under the category of the postcolonial. Many argue that Latin America, being a former Spanish colony, has, ultimately, very little in common with the conditions and legacies of colonization as elaborated by British and French postcolonial critics and theorists. These discussions went on for years, and in many ways have never ceased. As a result of these rather unresolved debates Latin America never fully obtained critically as a site of postcolonial inquiry. Instead, the field came to see what is now known as decolonial theory, and not postcolonial thought, emerge over the past twenty years as an increasingly prominent analytic approach for the study of Latin America's colonial legacies. Defined in opposition to postcolonialism, which many Latin Americanist critics found to be still too imbedded within the Western critical tradition, "Decoloniality" or the "decolonial option" came to serve as the name for a theoretico-political paradigm promoting indigenous, aboriginal, or other previously colonized and relegated modes of knowledge as a means to challenge Western Reason's claim to universality. Walter Mignolo differentiates between the two in the following way, "decolonial thinking is differentiated from postcolonial theory or postcolonial studies in that the genealogy of these are located in French post-structuralism more than in the dense history of planetary decolonial thinking ("Epistemic Disobedience" 46). While this distinction is carried out somewhat tautologically, the point made is that while postcolonial theory continues to rely heavily on certain strands of post-structural thought, decoloniality claims not to. Through concepts such as border thinking, delinking (Walter Mignolo), transm odernity (Enrique Dussel), and the coloniality of pow er (Anibal Quijano) decoloniality positions itself as a uniquely non-eurocentric critical tradition that diverges from and aims to surpass other prominent theoretical models such as Marxism, deconstruction, as well as postcolonial theory itself. Within various fields and disciplines, ranging from literary and cultural studies to history and anthropology, the decolonial option has become established as a methodological platform and has been heralded by some as a revolutionary paradigm for the cultural and political emancipation of formerly colonized cultures from western modes of knowledge and power.
NEW APPROACHES TO LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: Culture and Power. Edited by Juan Poblete. Routledge (2... more NEW APPROACHES TO LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES: Culture and Power. Edited by Juan Poblete. Routledge (2018).
Critical Multilingualism Studies 2:1 (2014): 20-37, 2014
This essay reflects on the potential meanings of 'critical multilingualism studies' in an era of ... more This essay reflects on the potential meanings of 'critical multilingualism studies' in an era of unparalleled cultural and economic porosity, exploring how such a scholarly and theoretical field might reimagine inter-and multilingual inquiry in the Humanities, Comparative Literature, Latin American Studies, critical theory, and second language acquisition. Applying insights from interrogates the ideological distinction between 'monolingual signification' and 'translational signification,' between universalist abstractions and the specific language(s) from which they issue. Taking the Zapatista uprisings of 1994 as a case study, Acosta then turns to how the ascription 'monolingual' has been mobilized in Mexican public discourse.
CR: New Centennial Review, 13:2 (203-222), 2013
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Aug 1, 2010
Dispositio/n, Jan 1, 2005
Exceedingly rare is the book that effects a marked shift in the terms and nature of existing disc... more Exceedingly rare is the book that effects a marked shift in the terms and nature of existing disciplinary debates. Even more rare is the book that evinces such critical possibilities with--simply and only--a collection of close, rigorous, readings of historical and narrative texts. The present book will no doubt be counted among these.