Forms Of Dictatorship: Power, Narrative, And Authoritarianism In The Latina/o Novel (oxford Studies In American Literary History)

An intra-ethnic study of Latina/o fiction written in the United States from the early 1990s to the present, Forms of Dictatorship examines novels that depict the historical reality of dictatorship and exploit dictatorship as a literary trope. This literature constitutes a new sub-genre of Latina/o fiction, which the author calls the Latina/o dictatorship novel. The book illuminates Latina/os' central contributions to the literary history of the dictatorship novel by analyzing how Latina/o writers with national origin roots in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America imaginatively represent authoritarianism. The novels collectively generate what Harford Vargas terms a "Latina/o counter-dictatorial imaginary" that positions authoritarianism on a continuum of domination alongside imperialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, neoliberalism, and border militarization. Focusing on novels by writers such as Junot Díaz, Héctor Tobar, Cristina García, Salvador Plascencia, and Francisco Goldman, the book reveals how Latina/o dictatorship novels foreground more ubiquitous modes of oppression to indict Latin American dictatorships, U.S. imperialism, and structural discrimination in the U.S., as well as repressive hierarchies of power in general. Harford Vargas simultaneously utilizes formalist analysis to investigate how Latina/o writers mobilize the genre of the novel and formal techniques such as footnotes, focalization, emplotment, and metafiction to depict dictatorial structures and relations. In building on narrative theories of character, plot, temporality, and perspective, Harford Vargas explores how the Latina/o dictatorship novel stages power dynamics. Forms of Dictatorship thus queries the relationship between different forms of power and the power of narrative form --- that is, between various instantiations of repressive power structures and the ways in which different narrative structures can reproduce and resist repressive power. An intra-ethnic study of Latina/o fiction written in the United States from the early 1990s to the present, Forms of Dictatorship examines novels that depict the historical reality of dictatorship and exploit dictatorship as a literary trope. This literature constitutes a new sub-genre of Latina/o fiction, which the author calls the Latina/o dictatorship novel. The book illuminates Latina/os' central contributions to the literary history of the dictatorship novel by analyzing how Latina/o writers with national origin roots in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America imaginatively represent authoritarianism. The novels collectively generate what Harford Vargas terms a "Latina/o counter-dictatorial imaginary" that positions authoritarianism on a continuum of domination alongside imperialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, neoliberalism, and border militarization. Focusing on novels by writers such as Junot Díaz, Héctor Tobar, Cristina García, Salvador Plascencia, and Francisco Goldman, the book reveals how Latina/o dictatorship novels foreground more ubiquitous modes of oppression to indict Latin American dictatorships, U.S. imperialism, and structural discrimination in the U.S., as well as repressive hierarchies of power in general. Harford Vargas simultaneously utilizes formalist analysis to investigate how Latina/o writers mobilize the genre of the novel and formal techniques such as footnotes, focalization, emplotment, and metafiction to depict dictatorial structures and relations. In building on narrative theories of character, plot, temporality, and perspective, Harford Vargas explores how the Latina/o dictatorship novel stages power dynamics. Forms of Dictatorship thus queries the relationship between different forms of power and the power of narrative form --- that is, between various instantiations of repressive power structures and the ways in which different narrative structures can reproduce and resist repressive power. " An intra-ethnic study of Latina/o fiction written in the United States from the early 1990s to the present, Forms of Dictatorship examines novels that depict the historical reality of dictatorship and exploit dictatorship as a literary trope. This literature constitutes a new sub-genre of Latina/o fiction, which the author calls the Latina/o dictatorship novel. The book illuminates Latina/os' central contributions to the literary history of the dictatorship novel by analyzing how Latina/o writers with national origin roots in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America imaginatively represent authoritarianism. The novels collectively generate what Harford Vargas terms a "Latina/o counter-dictatorial imaginary" that positions authoritarianism on a continuum of domination alongside imperialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, neoliberalism, and border militarization. Focusing on novels by writers such as Junot Díaz, Héctor Tobar, Cristina García, Salvador Plascencia, and Francisco Goldman, the book reveals how Latina/o dictatorship novels foreground more ubiquitous modes of oppression to indict Latin American dictatorships, U.S. imperialism, and structural discrimination in the U.S., as well as repressive hierarchies of power in general. Harford Vargas simultaneously utilizes formalist analysis to investigate how Latina/o writers mobilize the genre of the novel and formal techniques such as footnotes, focalization, emplotment, and metafiction to depict dictatorial structures and relations. In building on narrative theories of character, plot, temporality, and perspective, Harford Vargas explores how the Latina/o dictatorship novel stages power dynamics. Forms of Dictatorship thus queries the relationship between different forms of power and the power of narrative form -- that is, between various instantiations of repressive power structures and the ways in which different narrative structures can reproduce and resist repressive power. "-- Provided by publisher An intraethnic study of Latina/o fiction written in the United States from the early 1990s to the present, this book examines novels that depict the historical reality of dictatorship and exploit dictatorship as a literary trope. This literature constitutes a new subgenre of Latina/o fiction that the author calls the Latina/o dictatorship novel. The book illuminates Latina/os’ central contributions to the literary history of the dictatorship novel by analyzing how U.S. Latina/os with national origin roots in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America imaginatively represent authoritarianism. The novels collectively generate what the author terms a “Latina/o counter-dictatorial imaginary” that positions authoritarianism on a continuum of domination alongside imperialism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, neoliberalism, and border militarization. The book reveals how Latina/o dictatorship novels foreground these modes of oppression to indict Latin American dictatorships, U.S. imperialism, and structural discrimination in the United States, as well as repressive hierarchies of power in general. The author simultaneously utilizes formalist analysis to investigate how Latina/o writers mobilize the genre of the novel and formal techniques such as footnotes, focalization, emplotment, and metafiction to depict dictatorial structures and relations. The author builds on narrative theories of character, plot, temporality, and perspective to explore how the Latina/o dictatorship novel stages power dynamics. The book thus queries the relationship between different forms of power and the power of narrative form—that is, between various instantiations of repressive power structures and the ways in which different narrative structures can reproduce and resist repressive power. Cover 1 Forms of Dictatorship: power, narrative, and authoritarianism in the latina/o novel 4 COPYRIGHT 5 DEDICATION 6 {ACKNOWLEDGMENTS} 8 {CONTENTS} 14 {Introduction}: Literary Form and Authoritarian Power in the Latina/o Dictatorship Novel 18 The Latina/o Counter-dictatorial Imaginary 20 An Américan Tradition 24 The Power of Form and the Form of Power 29 Postdictatorship and Postmemory Hauntings 33 Pan-Latina/o and Trans-Latina/o Fictions 39 Chapters in the Latina/o Dictatorship Novel 44 {1}: Dictating Narrative Power 49 The Dictator as Minor Character 53 A Marginalized Hero 61 Underground Storytelling 66 {2}: The Borderlands of Authoritarianism 75 The Author as Dictator 79 Narrative Territory 86 Plotting Resistance and the Typography of Dissent 89 Narrative Rights and Narrative Disclosure 94 {3}: The Floating Dictatorship 101 Captain of a Dictator-ship 104 Ships of Death 111 Navigating the Discourse of a Shipwreck 118 Scraps, Holes, Ruins 123 {4}: Plotting Justice 133 Ordering Disorder 136 Individual Retribution against Collective Impunity 144 Narrative Scales of Justice 150 {5}: The Fall of the Patriarchs 163 Foiling Hypermasculine Hero Myths 166 A Resolver Aesthetic 175 Defiant Daughters 183 {Coda} 192 On Placas and Palimpsests of Paint 194 Creating Political Memory 207 {NOTES} 210 Introduction 210 Chapter 1 218 Chapter 2 221 Chapter 3 227 Chapter 4 232 Chapter 5 237 Coda 244 {Works Cited} 250 {Index} 264 "Forms of Dictatorship argues that that Latina/o fiction unveils the horrors of domination in both Latin America and the United States, the manuscript reveals how Latina/os are haunted by multiple kinds of repressive regimes. An intra-ethnic study of Latina/o fiction published from the early 1990s to the present, Forms of Dictatorship is the first book-length study to examine Latina/o novels that employ dictatorship as a historical reality and a literary trope. This work constitutes a new sub-genre of contemporary Latina/o fiction known as the Latina/o dictatorship novel. Forms of Dictatorship is also the first study to comparatively analyze how U.S. Latina/os from different national origins in the Caribbean, Mexico, and Central and South America represent authoritarianism. Critical examinations of Latina/o literature have privileged the lenses of race, class, gender, sexuality, migration, and language; my study examines authoritarianism alongside these multiple axes"-- Provided by publisher An intraethnic study of Latina/o fiction written in the United States from the early 1990s to the present, this work examines novels that depict the historical reality of dictatorship and exploit dictatorship as a literary trope