In the Mean Time: Temporal Colonization and the Mexican American Literary Tradition PDF
Preview In the Mean Time: Temporal Colonization and the Mexican American Literary Tradition
In the Mean Time Postwestern Horizons General Editor William R. Handley University of Southern California Series Editors José Aranda Rice University Melody Graulich Utah State University Thomas King University of Guelph Rachel Lee University of California, Los Angeles Nathaniel Lewis Saint Michael’s College Stephen Tatum University of Utah I N the M E A N T I M E Temporal Colonization and the Mexican American Literary Tradition Erin Murrah-M andril University of Nebraska Press · Lincoln © 2020 by the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska An earlier version of chapter 1 was published as “Ruiz de Burton’s ‘Contemporary Novel’: Multifarious Time in The Squatter and the Don,” Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 41, no. 2 (2016): 37– 63. © Regents of the University of California. Published by the ucla Chicano Studies Research Center Press. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Murrah- Mandril, Erin, author. Title: In the mean time: temporal colonization and the Mexican American literary tradition / Erin Murrah- Mandril. Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2020] | Series: Postwestern horizons | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2019032954 | isbn 9781496211828 (hardback) | isbn 9781496221711 (epub) | isbn 9781496221728 (mobi) | isbn 9781496221735 (pdf) Subjects: lcsh: American literature— 20th century— History and criticism. | American literature— Mexican American authors— History and criticism. | Space and time in literature. | Mexican- American Border Region— In literature. | Mexican Americans— Intellectual life. Classification: lcc ps153.m4 m87 2020 | ddc 810.9/005— dc23 lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2019032954 Set in Garamond Premier by Mikala R. Kolander. Designed by N. Putens. For Chris For all time Contents Preface ix Introduction: The Mean Time of U.S. Modernity 1 1. Temporal Colonization: Getting Railroaded in The Squatter and the Don 25 2. Progress in the Land of Poco Tiempo: Miguel Antonio Otero’s Political Vision 49 3. Specters of Recovery: Temporal Economies of Debt and Inheritance in Adina De Zavala’s History and Legends of the Alamo 79 4. Modernity and Historical Desire: Differential Time Consciousness in Caballero 105 Afterword: The Discontinuous Inheritance of Mexican American Literature 135 Notes 147 References 155 Index 165 Preface The experience of writing In the Mean Time has been as recursive as the his- torical texts I explore in the book, and in many ways writing it has prompted a personal rendition of literary- historical recovery. In the spring of 2017, well into the production of In the Mean Time, I found a 1986 article by Hector A. Torres titled “Discourse and Plot in Rolando Hinojosa’s The Valley: Narra- tivity and the Recovery of Chicano Heritage.” Torres argues that The Valley has a configurational plot rather than an episodic plot. The configurational plot, Torres explains, is purposeful and whole, not anarrative, as some might assume, and it constitutes a retrieval of the “most fundamental potentialities” of our past (87). The terminology and theory were different, but the under- lying idea was strikingly similar to what I had been working on for the past few years. Hector Torres had been one of my graduate mentors, but he was murdered in March 2010. He introduced me to literary theory over the course of three graduate classes and many unofficial discussions over a pint of beer. I never studied Chicana/o literature with him; I had taken his courses on literary theory, grammar, and narratology. When I found Dr. Torres’s article, it presented the all- too- common but very uncanny experience of seeing my own thought process constituted in a past that I never knew about, like a lost intellectual inheritance. It was a moment of recovery and the kind of recursive repetition Dr. Torres often theorized. If I am completely honest, the focus in chapter 3 on specters emerged from a desire to channel Dr. Torre’s intellectual spirit, his impressive and perplexing grasp of Derridian philosophy, while also reckoning with his untimely death. ix
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