Waves of Decolonization

Luis-Brown David Luis-Brown

Description

In Waves of Decolonization, David Luis-Brown reveals how between the 1880s and the 1930s, writer-activists in Cuba, Mexico, and the United States developed narratives and theories of decolonization, of full freedom and equality in the shadow of empire. They did so decades before the decolonization of Africa and Asia in the mid-twentieth century. Analyzing the work of nationalist leaders, novelists, and social scientists, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Jose Marti, Claude McKay, Luis-Brown brings together an array of thinkers who linked local struggles against racial oppression and imperialism to similar struggles in other nations. With discourses and practices of hemispheric citizenship, writers in the Americas broadened conventional conceptions of rights to redress their loss under the expanding United States empire. In focusing on the transnational production of the national in the wake of U.S. imperialism, Luis-Brown emphasizes the need for expanding the linguistic and national boundaries of U.S. American culture and history.Luis-Brown traces unfolding narratives of decolonization across a broad range of texts. He explores how Marti and Du Bois, known as the founders of Cuban and black nationalisms, came to develop anticolonial discourses that cut across racial and national divides. He illuminates how cross-fertilizations among the Harlem Renaissance, Mexican indigenismo, and Cuban negrismo in the 1920s contributed to broader efforts to keep pace with transformations unleashed by ongoing conflicts over imperialism, and he considers how those transformations were explored in novels by McKay of Jamaica, Jesus Masdeu of Cuba, and Miguel Angel Menendez of Mexico. Focusing on ethnography's uneven contributions to decolonization, he investigates how Manuel Gamio, a Mexican anthropologist, and Zora Neale Hurston each adapted metropolitan social science for use by writers from the racialized periphery.

Sujets

• Histoire
• USA
• México
• History of the Americas
• États-Unis
• Mexico
• Cuba

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822391463
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

wav e s o f d e c o l o n i z at i o n

n e w a m e r i c a n i s t s ASeriesEditedbyDonaldE.Pease

Wave s of De coloni zation

Discourses of Race and

Hemispheric Citizenship in Cuba,

Mexico, and the United States

DAVID LU I S  BROWN

D u k e U n ive r s it y Pre s s Durham and London 2008

∫2008 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by Jennifer Hill Typeset in Minion Pro by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

LibraryofCongress Cataloging-in-PublicationData appearonthelastprinted pageofthisbook.

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acknowledgments

introduction Waves of Decolonization and Discourses of Hemispheric Citizenship

one ‘‘White Slaves’’ and the ‘‘Arrogant Mestiza’’: Reconfiguring Whiteness in TheSquatterandtheDonandRamona

CONTENTS

two ‘‘The Coming Unities’’ in ‘‘Our America’’: Decolonization and Anticolonial Messianism in Martí, Du Bois, and the Santa de Cabora

three Transnationalisms against the State: Contesting Neocolonialism in the Harlem Renaissance, CubanNegrismo, and MexicanIndigenismo

four ‘‘Rising Tides of Color’’: Ethnography and Theories of Race and Migration in Boas, Park, Gamio, and Hurston

coda Waves of Decolonization and Discourses of Hemispheric Citizenship

notes references index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

. In describing the process of writing this book to my nonacademic friends, I liken it to the craft of candle dipping. Just as a candle gains its shape through the process of repeatedly dipping the wick in hot wax, so these chapters came into being through a long process of research and writing, conversations in and out of the classroom, travel, and help from other scholars. I am grateful to all those who generously added the hues of their own thinking to this project. Susan Gillman has been the best possible men- tor and an invariably stimulating intellectual interlocutor. Norma Klahn shared her comprehensive knowledge of Latin American history and litera- ture. José Saldívar’s impassioned teaching and writing have inspired my hemispheric approach to cultural production. I am extremely grateful to George Lipsitz for his comments on an earlier draft of this book— they provided an invaluable compass to me through the final revisions; to Beth Freeman for meeting with me at an early stage in the publication process; and to Robert Gross— who came to my aid at a crucial moment— for his suggestions for revision. For their comments on chapters or parts of chap- ters, many thanks go to Chris Breu, Johnnella Butler, John González, Gwen Kirkpatrick, Vibeke Laroi, Francine Masiello, Julio Ramos, Roger Rouse, Roz Spa√ord, and the late Gene Ulansky and to my graduate school bud- dies Stuart Christie and Chris Shinn. Cathy Rigsby, the executive editor of AmericanLiterature, and the anonymous readers for the journal provided suggestions for editing and revising an earlier version of chapter 1 that was

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published as an article. I would also like to thank Judy Frank, my thesis advisor at Amherst College, and Robert Gooding-Williams, Robert Gross, George Kateb, Barry O’Connell, Andrew Parker, and Robert Thurman for their inspirational teaching before my graduate career began. Thanks as well to Dickson Bruce and Raúl Fernández at Irvine and to Michael Cowan and Lourdes Martínez-Echazabal at Santa Cruz for teaching courses that proved important to my career. I am grateful to several sources for their financial support. Two two-year fellowships allowed me to research and finalize the manuscript. A Univer- sity of California Predoctoral Humanities Fellowship provided me with two years of full support for graduate study. And a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship gave me the opportunity to finish a draft of the manuscript as I began work on a new book project. Fortunately for me, Sara Johnson’s time as a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley overlapped with mine; I enjoyed talking with her about all things Cuban. Other fellow- ships that supported my research and writing included two Amherst Col- lege John Woodru√ Simpson fellowships for graduate study; a University of California at Santa Cruz Literature Department qualifying examination fellowship and dissertation quarter fellowship; a University of California Humanities Research Institute Fellowship to participate in the residential research group ‘‘The Cultures of the Americas and the Narratives of Glob- alization,’’ convened by Gwen Kirkpatrick. I am grateful to the participants in the Humanities Research Institute who helped to make my time in Irvine productive and enjoyable: Leo Chávez, Beth Marchant, Sergio de la Mora, Francine Masiello, Roger Rouse, and Josefina ‘‘Fina’’ Saldaña. My friends from the Los Angeles area also kept me going: ‘‘Little’’ Luis Camacho and his daughter Alexis, Michael Matteucci, Buddy Méndez, Casey Nagel, and Anita Weston. Casey deserves special mention for spend- ing hours helping me to solve computer and software problems. Finally, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute Fellowship allowed me to participate in ‘‘The Americas of José Martí’’ institute at the University of South Florida in Tampa and at the Centro de Estudios Mar- tianos in Havana, Cuba. I’d like to thank Jossianna Arroyo, Laura Lomas, and Elliott Young for their camaraderie in Tampa and Havana and Ivan Schulman for having led the institute. Nahum Chandler’s work on W. E. B. Du Bois has been the greatest gift to me, and I was delighted to finally meet him while we were both working short stints in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University

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of California at Davis. Many thanks to Neil Larsen for his interest in my work and his advice. The final stretch of revisions of this book took place as I worked at Lafayette College. I would like to thank all of my colleagues there, but especially Paul Cefalu, Bianca Falbo, Tori Langland, Alix Ohlin, Beth Seetch, Andrea Smith, and Lee Upton. I would also like to thank my new colleagues at the University of Miami for welcoming me and for helping to make my transition run so smoothly. Publishing with Duke University Press has been a dream come true, especially because the two anonymous readers of the manuscript were so helpful in their suggestions for revision. I would also like to thank my editors at Duke, Sharon Parks Torian and Reynolds Smith, for all of their work in making this book a reality, as well as the rest of the sta√ at the press. Finally, I would like to thank my family for their emotional and finan- cial support: the late Tina (Puccinelli) Acerbi, mynonni(Italian-American dialect for grandmother); Brenda and Donal Brown, my parents; my sis- ter Paula, her husband, John, and their children Erin and Evan; the late ‘‘Uncle’’ Al Minetti, my godfather, who was like a grandfather to me; my son Dante, my daughter Sofìa, and my life partner and wife, Tina. In tribute to Tina I can do no better than to agree wholeheartedly with my mother-in-law, who tells me that even if my travails as a graduate student and professor haven’t made me rich, I’ve been ‘‘livin’ on love!’’ My in-laws have been wonderful: Connie and Frank Prado, their children, especially Mark Luis, and their many grandchildren. Anduertuefzoraabngoes to the late Warren Kolodny, my best friend from college and a consummate ‘‘cronopio’’ to boot. A shorter version of chapter 1 appeared as ‘‘‘White Slaves’ and the ‘Arro- gantMestiza’: Reconfiguring Whiteness inuaSqertteThnoDdnaehtand Ramona,’’ inAmeetaruteriracniL69.4 (December 1997): 813–39, copyright 1997 by Duke University Press.