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Machos y Malinchistas: Chicano/Latino Gang Narratives, Masculinity, &
Affect
by
José Alfredo Navarro
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ENGLISH)
December 2012
Copyright 2012 José Alfredo Navarro
Object Description
| Title | Machos y malinchistas: Chicano/Latino gang narratives, masculinity, & affect |
| Author | Navarro, José Alfredo |
| Author email | jnavarro13@gmail.com;jnavar17@calpoly.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | English |
| School | College of Letters, Arts And Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2012-08-27 |
| Date submitted | 2012-10-16 |
| Date approved | 2012-10-16 |
| Restricted until | 2013-10-16 |
| Date published | 2013-10-16 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Rowe, John Carlos |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Lloyd, David C. Vallejo, Jody Agius |
| Abstract | Machos y Malinchistas interrogates how Chicano nationalist cultural productions, after the Chicano movement (1960-2010), have posited a monolithic Chicano/Latino identity primarily based on a racist, heteropatriarchal nation-state model for nationalism that results in the formation of a “transcendental revolutionary Chicano [male] subject” (Fregoso). Furthermore, although this project examines how these literary, cinematic, and musical representations of Chicano/Latino men in late 20th century are strategically deployed by the mainstream media and also by Chicanos/Latinos to simultaneously reproduce and resist imperialist, racist, and heteropatriarchal logics of domination. It also highlights the process through which dominant cultural ideologies force Chicanas/os and Latinas/os to imagine themselves through the prism of a white racist, heteropatriarchal nation-state—one that ultimately regulates Chicano/Latino identity and sexuality. Such nationalist narratives, I argue, not only effect a symbolic erasure of Chicana and Latina women—especially with regard to representations of these women in the novels and films I analyze—but also fiercely regulate male Chicano/Latino sexuality. Therefore, many of these literary and cultural representations of Chicanas/os and Latinas/os—especially in gang narratives, and particularly with respect to representations of so-called “figures of resistance” like El Pachuco and El Cholo—reveal the effects of Spanish and U.S. colonial residues on the Chicano/Latino community while they underscore the history of racism and sexism in the U.S. ❧ In this respect, my preliminary conclusion is that the representations of Chicano/Latino men and their masculinities/sexualities in literature, film and music in the U.S. has largely been what I call a masking—or brown-facing—of the legacies of Spanish and U.S. imperialisms, heteropatriarchy, and racism in the country. Nevertheless, I maintain that such performances still form particularly cogent responses to state oppression and the underlying logics of domination. Furthermore, I argue that these literary, cinematic, and musical products create opportunities to disrupt these imperial logics. Finally, in my consideration of the ways that gender and sexuality mediate Chicano nationalist discourses, especially as these discourses relate to Chicano/Latino masculinity represented by Chicano/Latino gangs, I begin to rearticulate Chicano/a Latino/a identity as a part of a larger anti-racist, egalitarian, and anti-imperialist political identity that functions to “liberate [Chicano/a and other minority] constituencies from the subordinating forces of the state” (Rodríguez 2009). ❧ Consequently, Machos y Malinchistas utilizes the fields of American Studies, Postcolonial, and Cultural Studies—specifically, Chicana/o Cultural Studies—, literary criticism, and other subaltern historiographies as key frameworks for understanding Chicana/o Latina/o nationalist cultural productions. My project draws upon recent Chicana/o Latina/o scholarship like Richard T. Rodríguez’s Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (2009) and Ellie Hernández’s Postnationalism in Chicana/o Literature and Culture (2009) and puts key elements of these respective texts into conversation with my analysis of Chicano/Latino nationalist texts—specifically, with regard to the way Chicano/Latino gang figures have been utilized as a conduit of Chicano nationalist resistance. More importantly, like Monica Brown’s Gang Nation: Delinquent Citizens in Puerto Rican, Chicano, and Chicana Narratives (2002), my project levels a critique of Chicano nationalism through the prisms of gender and sexuality in gang narratives. However, unlike Brown’s critique, which relies heavily on notions of citizenship that support a nation-state framework for constructions of the Chicana/o Latina/o identity, my critique offers a transnational and localized reimagining of the Chicana/o Latina/o “nation” that facilitates a disruption of nationalist positions and perspectives. My analysis, therefore, stages a transnational, stratified and feminist critique of Chicano/Latino masculinity and sexuality that is mediated through Chicano nationalism in these literary and cultural texts. ❧ Chapter 1 of my project puts Piri Thomas’ Down These Mean Streets (1967) in conversation with Luis J. Rodríguez’s Always Running (1993) in order to analyze the ways in which Chicano/Latino cultural nationalism and masculinity continues to develop and assert itself at the expense of women’s [especially Chicana/Latina women’s] bodies though sexual violence. I argue specifically that in these texts, sexual violence functions to make “conquerors” of subjugated men and to solidify homosocial relationships between them based on a form of violence that is rooted in imperialist conquests rather than nationalist projects. Nevertheless, I also argue that the representations in these texts by Thomas and Rodríguez present, at the very least, multidimensional Chicano and Latino figures—figures that attempt to deal with their own participation in and complicity with these systems of oppression. For example, in the work of Thomas, this means writing in the context of prison and, for Rodriguez, this is carried out through leveling critiques of the school, prison and police systems. To that end, I suggest that these two writers rely on the genre of autobiography to help articulate different, decolonial and transnational subjectivities for themselves and for Chicanos/Latinos in general. ❧ Chapter 2 examines cinematic representations of el cholo (i.e. the Chicano/Latino gang member) as a cultural signifier in the films Boulevard Nights (1979), American Me (1992), and La Mission (2009) because these films highlight the critical distinction that needs to be made with respect to the performance of different types of masculinities and Chicano/Latino nationalism, and how such performances relate to structures of oppression like the prison system. I argue that while these representations reinforce heteronormative and racist narratives related to Chicano/Latino gang members because they posit Chicano masculinity as the violent antithesis of a “benign” hegemonic white masculinity in order to maintain racist patriarchal structures of oppression, they also allow for representations that undermine such structures. One of the key distinctions among these films is film written, produced, or significantly controlled by Chicanos/Latinos themselves insofar as such influence creates greater complexity in representations of Chicano/Latino gang members, their masculinities/sexualities, and nationalism. ❧ Chapter 3 focuses on the connections between the musical collection of rhythm and blues in Art Laboe’s “Oldies but Goodies” volumes and how this type of music challenges static, stereotypical constructions of Chicanos and Latinos as nihilistic, hypermasculine, and tragic figures of the community. Through an analysis of these songs/lyrics and their deployment by Chicano/Latino gang members, I suggest a contiguity between these figures and African American musical traditions that highlights a radical potential to create a liberatory space akin to what Josh Kun calls an “audiotopia.” The connection, I suggest, reveals the varied and multivalent personhood of these Chicano/Latino men, and a complex articulation of their own masculinities through the ways this music helps them express complex emotions. In addition, I argue that oldies music also formulates a cultural and linguistic code that facilitates the transmission of these same complex emotions despite strictly regulated enactments of Chicano/Latino masculinity in gangs, in the barrio, and in prisons in California. ❧ Importantly, because my analyses focus on the discursive construction of a transcendental [male] Chicano/Latino subjectivity, it reveals how machismo—a racialized perfomance of hypermasculinity—is really a shadow of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. This argument expands on Rosa-Linda Fregoso’s (661, 1993) position that “[c]ontrary to the historically variable and shifting range of Hegemonic masculinities, the representation of the masculine identity of racially subordinated groups stands out for its monologic and homogeneous economy, particularly in the case of Latinos.” My research suggests that Chicano/Latino music, particularly, “oldies” music, offer a literal and symbolic “soundtrack” to the representations of Chicano/Latino men that undermine a monolithic representation of these men. Machos y Malinchistas, thus, contributes to a process of decolonization for Chicanas/os and Latinas/os in re-examining the role of cultural nationalism in social and political movements like the Chicano movement generally in relation to Chicana/o Latina/o literature, film and music. In the end, I maintain that nationalism can be strategically deployed and invoked to effect political change but it must be reconfigured around different social relations that are inclusive, queerly imagined, and transcend the limits of a singular nationalist identity that ultimately reinforces white supremacy. |
| Keyword | Chicano; Chicana; Latino; Latina; gang narratives; film; literature; rhythm & blues (oldies music); sexuality; masculinity; affect |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Navarro, José Alfredo |
| Physical access | The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given. |
| Repository name | University of Southern California Digital Library |
| Repository address | USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 7002, 106 University Village, Los Angeles, California 90089-7002, USA |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume4/etd-NavarroJos-1252.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Repository email | cisadmin@lib.usc.edu |
| Full text | Machos y Malinchistas: Chicano/Latino Gang Narratives, Masculinity, & Affect by José Alfredo Navarro A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (ENGLISH) December 2012 Copyright 2012 José Alfredo Navarro |
