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
Postnationalism, Globalism, and the New American Studies
Curricula and scholarship in American Studies have changed significantly over the past decade, reflecting the important influences of women's studies, ethnic studies, postmodern and postcolonial theories. Earlier approaches, such as the Puritan Origins and Myth-and-Symbol schools, attempted to elaborate those features of American identity and social organization that are unique national characteristics. Often implicit in this nationalist approach to the study of U.S. culture was the assumption that the United States constitutes a model for democratic nationality that might be imitated or otherwise adapted by other nations in varying stages of their "development." The criticism of such "American Exceptionalism" has focused on both its contributions to U.S. cultural imperialism and its exclusions of the different cultures historically crucial to U.S. social, political, and economic development. In response to concepts of American identity shaped by Western patriarchy and Eurocentric models for social organization, more recent critical approaches have focused on the many cultures that have been marginalized by
Cornel West : a critical reader
Acknowledgements. Notes on Contributors. Cornel West: The Vanguard of Existential and Democratic Hope: George Yancy.Part I: Pragmatism: 1. Pragmatism Resurgent: A Reading of The American Evasion of Philosophy: Hilary W. Putnam.2.The Unacknowledged Fourth Tradition: An Essay on Nihilism, Decadence, and the Black Intellectual Tradition in the Existential Pragmatic Thought of Cornel West: Lewis R. Gordon.3. Cornel West on Prophesy, Pragmatism, and Philosophy: A Critical Evaluation of Prophetic Pragmatism: Clevis Headley.4. Which Pragmatism? Whose America?: Eduardo Mendieta.Part II: Philosophy of Religion: 5. "Let Suffering Speak": The Vocation of a Black Intellectual: James H. Cone.6. Religion and the Mirror of God: Historicism, Truth and Religious Pluralism: George Yancy.7. Is Cornel West Also Among the Theologians? The Shadow of the Divine in the Religious Thought of Cornel West: Victor Anderson.8. Cornel West's Improvisational Philosophy of Religion : M. Shawn Copeland.9. Existential Aptness and Epistemological Correctness: Cornel West and the Identity of the "Lord": Josiah Ulysses Young, III.Part III: Political Philosophy: 10. Cornel West on Gender and Family: Some Admiring and Critical Comments: Iris M. Young.11. Prophetic Pragmatism as Political Philosophy : Charles W. Mills.12. "Radical Historicism," Antiphilosophy, and Marxism: John P. Pittman.13. Cornel West and Afro-Nihilism: A Reconsideration: Floyd W. Hayes, III.14. On Cornel West on W. E. B. Du Bois: Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr. 15. The Political Philosophy and Humanism of Cornel West: Howard McGary, Jr. Part IV: Cultural Studies:16. "It's Dark and Hell is Hot": Cornel West, the Crisis of African-American Intellectuals and the Cultural Politics of Race: Peniel E. Joseph.17. Reading Cornel West as a Humanistic Scholar: Rhetoric and Practice: Clarence Shole Johnson.18. Cornel West's Representations of the Intellectual: But Some of Us Are Brave?: Nada Elia.Afterword: Cornel West. Select Bibliography of Cornel West's Works. Index.