| "Graphic Language" argues that Chicano and Latino writers turn to a graphic mode of discourse in order to rethink political life in terms of images that bind contradictory viewpoints together. The graphic mode operates in a temporal mode of interruption or deferral, holding contradictions together for deliberation rather than expunging dissent in the service of progress. While scholars of Chicano history and cultural studies have made reference to graphic art, few have linked this visual culture to literary production. "Graphic Language" makes this link by tracing a "graphic" genealogy that begins with the graffiti and mural art that emerged during the Chicano Movement (c. 1965--1975). Chicano artists of this period turned to graphic forms to challenge and supplement the histories disseminated by institutions like schools, universities, and publishing houses. Shunned by such sanctioned cultural institutions, the activists worked together in cultural centers and created new social, geographical, and discursive spaces for recuperating their histories and telling new stories. While their efforts most visibly resulted in murals and posters, they also nurtured poetic voices, and, with their silk screens and print making machines, helped to distribute these to larger audiences. In this way, the graphic arts were key to the emergence of a Chicano "poetic voice," which scholars have long seen as foundational to Chicano subject formation. Restoring the connection between Chicano literature and visual culture allows us to better understand the genres of Chicano cultural production, the politics at stake in representations of the body, and the ways in which Chicano artists and writers connected to aesthetic and political traditions.;This project also supplements the reigning paradigms for thinking about Chicano and Latino narrative. "Graphic Language" examines three works---Gilbert Hernandez's graphic novel, Poison River (1994), Junot Diaz's short story collection, Drown (1997), and Jim Mendiola's film, Come and Take It Day (2001)---that make explicit reference to the comic book, a form that foregrounds the interrelation of the graphic and the literary. The graphic mode of discourse supplements the corrido paradigm, which has exerted a strong influence on the study of Chicano narrative. The corrido paradigm originates with Americo Paredes's classic study, With A Pistol In His Hand (1958), a text that many view as inaugurating the field of Chicano Studies. Paredes's monograph examines "The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez," which tells the story of a man who was wrongly accused of a crime by Texas Rangers and evaded arrest for ten days while the Rangers pursued him. The corrido paradigm emphasizes qualities like resistance, abstraction, mobility, and masculinity. In contrast, the graphic mode emphasizes interruption (a temporalization of resistance), embodiment, locality, and a range of gendered subject positions. The graphic mode allows us to understand feminist contributions to Chicano literature not as reactions to masculinist tendencies but rather as continuations of an ongoing project of embodying the Chicano subject. Additionally, the graphic mode produces an image archive and narrative repertoire that connects to a Latino social imaginary. |
