Tolerating Ambiguity

Although recent criticism, focused on issues of resistance and border writing, holds that Chicano/a representations of self and community unsettle and transform hegemonic ideology, it has not fully explained that deconstructive potential. Tolerating Ambiguity argues that the symbolic force of Chicano/a writing is an attribute of ethnic writing which, as a symptom or reminder of the repressed ethnicity of the national consciousness, disturbs the latter. Drawing on different genres, this study analyzes how Chicano/a writing, symptomatic of a repressed prenational identity, resists the binary symbolic order of the national consciousness to yield representations of communities characterized by a resistance to closure and homogeneity and by an accommodation of differences.

Autorentext

The Author: Wilson Neate is Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at Central Michigan University. Dr. Neate received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Irvine. He has published articles dealing with U.S. Latino/a writing, contemporary Mexican narrative, and the theoretical dimensions of ethnic literature.

Zusammenfassung
"Wilson Neate's trailblazing study charts a new course for Chicano/a literary criticism. 'Tolerating Ambiguity: Ethnicity and Community in Chicano/a Writing' offers an innovative approach to Chicano/a texts that foregrounds the complex relationship of this literature to U.S. national identity. Neate's carefully constructed theoretical framework, a convincing fusion of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and cultural criticism, provides fresh, insightful readings of a variety of Chicano/a works. Boldly highlighting the diversity of Chicano/a writing, 'Tolerating Ambiguity' is essential reading for serious scholars of Chicano/a literature." (Karen Christian, University of Maryland)