Decolonial Puerto Rican Women's Writings

Subversion in the Flesh

Roberta Hurtado

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9783030057305
• eBook ISBN: 9783030057312
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book exploresrepresentations of sentient-flesh— flesh that holds consciousness of being —inPuerto Rican women's literature.It considers how different literary devices can participate in the decolonization of the flesh as it is obfuscated by mappings of the 'body' from the Enlightenment era and colonial endeavors.Drawing on studies of cognitive development and epigenetics to identify how sentient-flesh creates knowledge of power and navigates methods of subversion for social justice, this book grapples with the question of how Puerto Rican women, living in the nation of their colonizer, manifest an identity that exists beyond the scope of colonization.It makes the case for a change in perspective that illustrates the conceptual shift from survivors to thrivers to educators. To do so, it draws upon Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa's theory in the flesh; Iris Lopez's theories of trauma-knowledge; and María Lugones's concept of 'world travelers' to retain the corporeal flesh and physical location in Latinas' attempts to write subversion under U.S. colonization across racial, cultural, and ethnic boundaries, as well as the gendered-sexuality barriers identified by Emma Pérez. This project builds on their work to frame Latina literature within a new discussion of how corporeal, memory, and sentient experiences of identity must center sentient-flesh as the source of decolonial consciousness rather than relapsing into discourses of the 'body'.

Index

A

abject, the

acceptance

Achteberg, Jeanne, Bridges of the Bodymind

Acosta Belén, Edna

activism

See alsodecolonialization, social justice movements and; political movements

adaptation

affect

affect theory

African Americans

See alsoblack women, sexuality of

impact of “weathering” on”

racial health disparities among

renarration of slavery and

African ancestry, Spain and

Africans

depictions of

enslaved

Afro-Boricuas

agency

Albizu Campo, Pedro

Alexander, Jeffrey

Algarín, Miguel

ALIANZA

Allende, Petra

Aloud! Voices from the Nuyorican Poet’s Café

Ambert, Alba

A Perfect Silence

Amerindians

analysis

anatomic dissections

anatomy

Anglo-U.S. coloniality

See alsocoloniality of power

Amerindians and

“bodies” and

domination and

experiences of

knowledge of

navigation of

pathologization of Puerto Ricans and

Puerto Rican women and

racism and

reactionary responses to

sexual assault in the home and

shift away from

subversion of

technologies of

Anglo-U.S. domination

See alsodomination

Anglo-U.S. male identity

Anglo-U.S. medical science

Anglo-U.S. supremacism

animals

“antidiscourses,” 145.10

anti-Spanish movements

Anzaldúa, Gloria

Coyolxauhqui imperative of

on healing

Light in the Dark/Luz en lo Oscuro

Making Face/Making Soul:Haciendo Caras

Arawak nation

Arroyo, María Luisa

“still bedwetting at nine,” 35.90”

art, construction of

assimilation

authority

automatism

autonomy, denial of

B

Baartman, Sarah

Bae, Albert

bedwetting. See enuresis

behaviors

Belpre, Pura

Bernard-Carreño, Regina

Beverly, John

Bierer, Linda

binaries

biological memory

biological responses

birth control

See alsomass sterilization

birthing

Black Panther Party

black women, sexuality of

blanqueamiento (“whitening”)

“body”/”bodies,” 4.90

of children

coloniality and

colonized

control of

delineating

differentiation from sentient-flesh

disciplining of

discourses of

domination of

Enlightenment and

experiences of

exploitation of

female

flesh and

in Girmay’s “Starlight Multiplication,” 158.40

Girmay’s use of the term

humanity and

identification of

information and

Latinas and

literary arts and

meanings of

memory and

narratives of

non/thinking

as object of power

objectification of

pathologizing of

power and

Puerto Rican women and

rendered vulnerable to abuse

representations of

science and

self-control and

sentient-flesh and

social control and

social difference and

sociosexual geo-racialization of

“spirit” and

subversion of

viewing of

vulnerable

Western European conce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• Introduction
• Enfleshment: Beneath the Body Lies Flesh
• Flesh-Memories: Bearing Witness to Trauma and Survival
• Sentient Narratives: Similes, Metaphors, and Dusmic Poetics Within the Senses
• Envisioning Empowerment: Recodifying the Meaning of Historical Trauma
• Strategic Decolonization: Methods for Resistance and Community Healing
• Conclusion: Sentient-Flesh Subversions
• Back Matter