"Cuando lleguemos": Narrativas Latinx del siglo XXI

Abstract

Since 2015, the use of the term "Latinx" has become widespread on the Internet and other sociocultural contexts. Referring to Latinas/os or Hispanics in the United States, the term not only problematizes national categories associated with Latinidades but also suggests a more inclusive vision of gender and sexual identities that transcends heteronormative binaries. The "x" in “Latinx” deconstructs gender binarism, pointing to a more flexible and expansive spectrum of gender and sexual identities in the context of transnational cultural formations, or what have been associated with “genderqueer” practices. This doctoral dissertation examines the origins, developments, and deployments of the term “Latinx” in the Internet and in a corpus of US Latinx literary texts in the 21st century. In particular, I examine the formation of transnational “Latinx” identities, discourses, and micro-resistances in Days of Awe (2001) by Achy Obejas, Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties (2004) by Felicia Luna Lemus, Rosas de abolengo (2011) by Sonia Rivera-Valdés, The Cha Cha Files: A Chapina Poética (2014) by Maya Chinchilla, A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir (2014) by Daisy Hernandez, and Juliet Takes a Breath (2015) by Gabby Rivera as well as these writers’ interventions on the Web 2.0, including their websites, blogs and social media. Each of my chapters studies the production of a transnational literary space, the rejection of gender binarisms, and the resistances enacted in US Latinx literature and the Web. The convergence of these three elements in the 21st century evinces a paradigmatic shift in US Latina/o literature. While the US Latina “literary boom” and borderlands literature might have sought synthesis or resolution, or the creation of a third space associated with Gloria Anzaldúa’s “consciousness of the borderlands,” the US Latinx literary texts examined here reject narrative resolution. Instead, US Latinx texts display what Michel Foucault has called micro-resistances, an endless process that challenges and deconstructs literary conventions and social norms. Resisting resolutions, US Latinx writers further extend their work onto the Internet, using social media as tools of resistances in the Latinx community. As a way of understanding the on-going micro-resistances in US Latinx literature and social media, I read José Esteban Muñoz´s idea of "futurity" and Juana María Rodriguez´s theories on "gestures" in relation to Giorgio Agamben´s theory on potentialities.