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- Title
Death to the Originary Narrative! or, Insurgent Multiculturalism and Teaching Multiethnic Literature.
- Authors
Torres-Padilla, José L.
- Abstract
This essay addresses the issues of nation and nationalism, insofar as these rubrics serve to connect literary studies and racial politics. The author interrogates the idea of nationhood by analyzing narratives of American literary history. The increasing popularity of multiethnic writers and the national and international recognition they are receiving belies the claim that in the United States, a New England hegemony completely dictates reading tastes. How critics and scholars respond to the narrative is another matter. More than anything, her insightful observations show how mostly white male literary historians have traditionally shared ideology that accommodates and glorifies their own subject positions, and that the entrenchment of these ideas speak more to the continuing exclusivity and power of the hermeneutic circle of critics that has influenced and shaped the field of "American" literature. The issues discussed in this essay are related to the role and limits of literary theory in the development and teaching of multiethnic literature in the United States, especially within the present adverse political atmosphere. If the Originary Narrative is ever to be supplanted, progressive teachers of multiethnic literature need to further the goals of an insurgent multiculturalism. They need to become adept practitioners of border pedagogy as they keep in mind the exigencies of history and the political and rhetorical nature of their acts.
- Subjects
UNITED States; ESSAYS; NATIONALISM; MULTICULTURALISM; POLITICS &; literature; LITERATURE studies; IDEOLOGY &; literature; SCHOLARS
- Publication
MELUS, 2005, Vol 30, Issue 2, p13
- ISSN
0163-755X
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.1093/melus/30.2.13