Artic le Reconquista : I lan Stavans and multicultural ist Latino / a discourse
Ilan Stavans constructs a multiculturalist framework for understanding the US Latino/a experience. By reading The Hispanic Condition (1995) alongside Stavans’ discussions of the Latino/a literary canon in the introductions to his anthologies, New World (1997) and Lengua Fresca (Augenbraum and Stavans, 2006), and his articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, I argue that this multiculturalist approach is based on an equation of culture with language. Through this linguistic formulation of Latinidad with the Spanish language as its defining facet, Stavans privileges a colonialist rendering of Latino/a history, tracing the ancestral lineage of Latino/as in terms of solely Western European culture. By valorizing Spanish colonization, Stavans glosses over sites of violence in order to highlight a linguistic inheritance and formulates US Latino/a identity in opposition to American indigenous cultures. Uncovering the way in which Ilan Stavans positions the indigenous as Other in his multiculturalist approach to Latinidad is essential to understanding the colonialist and conservative underpinnings of how Stavans structures the Latino/a literary canon. I will consequently address how Latino/a Studies critics have wrestled with Stavans’ influence on the field and the ways in which Stavans’ vision of US Latino/a Studies resembles or reflects its institutional orientation and disciplinary locations. Latino Studies (2009) 7, 410–434. doi:10.1057/lst.2009.42
The Latino/a canon and the emergence of post-sixties literature
In a timely study that explores the relationship between post-60s Latino/a literature and the establishment of a Latino/a canon, Raphael Dalleo and Elena Machado Saez examine the impact of a globalizing market on the production and reception of contemporary Latino/a literature. They focus on three Latino/a groups from the Spanish-speaking Caribbean – Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Cubans – because, despite their distinct histories, they share a ‘‘common inheritance of the anticolonial Civil Rights Sixties’’ (12). Dalleo and Machado Saez set the bulk of their study in a 1990s and early twenty-first century New York City because of New York’s proximity to the publishing industry and history of Civil Rights struggle. They argue against the ready categorization of post60s Latino/a literature as apolitical, assimilationist, upwardly mobile and inauthentic, and emphasize its creative and politically progressive potential. Dalleo and Machado Saez draw from multiculturalism and anticolonialism to challenge the separation between post-60s and 60s and 70s Latino/a literature. They use a methodology akin to that of anticolonialists, yet take issue with multiculturalists and anticolonialists. They explain that multiculturalism uncritically celebrates a hybrid Latinidad without considering how this hybridity is premised on histories of violence and struggle. They depart from anticolonialism because it locates oppositionality in a closed, idealized past, and they call for a framework that looks ahead. Moreover, Dalleo and Machado Saez posit that contemporary Latino/a literature is far more nuanced than either multiculturalists or anticolonialists portray it to be. Indeed, they emphasize the ambiguities of this literature. Contesting the notion that 60s and 70s ‘‘ghetto fiction’’ alone can be oppositional or ‘‘authentic,’’ they ask what defines Latino/a literature; if it is marked by oppositionality or authenticity, how are these traits construed? They question why anticolonial ghetto fiction has been characterized in stark contrast to post-60s Latino/a literature and why post-60s Latino/a writers have been labeled ‘‘sellouts.’’ Ultimately, they encourage a move away from such binaries. The book’s structure and examples highlight the need for said move. The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature begins by explaining that the work of Nuyorican anticolonial writer Pedro Pietri provides a model for post-60s literature (12). The text
FlowBrush: optical flow art
The depiction of motion in static representations has a long tradition in art and science alike. Often, motion is depicted by spatio-temporal summarizations that try to preserve as much information of the original dynamic content as possible. In our approach to depicting motion, we remove the spatial constraints and generate new content steered by the temporal changes in motion. Applying particle steering in combination with the dynamic color palette of the video content, we can create a wide range of different image styles. With recorded videos, or by live interaction with a webcam, one can influence the resulting image. We provide a set of intuitive parameters to affect the style of the result, the final image content depends on the video input. Based on a collection of results gathered from test users, we discuss example styles that can be achieved with FlowBrush. In general, our approach provides an open sandbox for creative people to generate aesthetic images from any video content they apply.