Description
Book SynopsisWinner, 2021 NACCS Book Award, given by the National Association for Chicano and Chicana StudiesExplores the how, why, and what of contemporary Chicanx culture, including punk rock, literary fiction, photography, mass graves, and digital and experimental installation artRacial Immanence attempts to unravel a Gordian knot at the center of the study of race and discourse: it seeks to loosen the constraints that the politics of racial representation put on interpretive methods and on our understanding of race itself. Marissa K. López argues that reading Chicanx literary and cultural texts primarily for the ways they represent Chicanxness only reinscribes the very racial logic that such texts ostensibly set out to undo. Racial Immanence proposes to read differently; instead of focusing on representation, it asks what Chicanx texts do, what they produce in the world, and specifically how they produce access to the ineffable but material experience of race. Intrigued by the attention to di
Trade Review"López staunchly debunks the idea that Chicanx identity can be thoroughly known or interpreted. Rather, she demonstrates why literature for and by people of color matters: they eschew the neoliberal argument for multicultural representation, instead questioning structural violence, shared precarity, and human imbrication within the more-than-human world. This is a bold, refreshing book that demonstrates the urgency and importance of Chicanx literature while simultaneously challenging the reasons why we read it." -- Julie A. Minich, author of
Accessible Citizenships: Disability, Nation, and the Cultural Politics of Greater Mexico "
Racial Immanence sets out to tackle a seemingly intractable problem for the study of race and literature: the constraints that racial representation puts on both interpretive methods and our understanding of race itself . In expanding our horizon of Chicanx cultural production beyond literary works to such objects as the Aztec “sun stone,” contemporary art photography, and Latinx punk music , López proposes a new way to read this body of work, asking what Chicanx texts
do, what they produce in the world, and how they access the ineffable yet material experience of race. An urgent and necessary book." -- John Alba Cutler, author of
Ends of Assimilation: The Formation of Chicano Literature"López advocates for reconsidering space and time through reading and writing in order to reimagine the social and to create a place of radical hope." * Choice *
