The presence of the past: The mythohistorical in the Chicano movement and the post-movement era

Lee Bebout, Purdue University

Abstract

This project examines how narratives of myth and history are used for political purposes. Focusing on the Chicano movement and the post-movement era, I put forth and explore a conceptualization of the mythohistorical, a constellation of myths and histories through which community is imagined and citizenship s articulated. While this effort draws upon and speaks to current scholarship in American Studies and Chicano/a Studies, it is grounded in a revisiting and reconfiguration of the myth-symbol school. Through recognizing the intersection and contestation of multiple myths and histories, I examine the discursive field through which Chicanos/as contested their elision from dominant U.S. narratives and fashioned a counterhegemonic struggle. For example, through declaring the Southwest to be Aztlán, an ancestral homeland, Chicanos/as claimed historical precedence and countered discourse that constructed them as perpetual immigrant. While I examine how myths and histories were deployed to contest the “spontaneous consent” of U.S. hegemony, the mythohistorical also exposes the often-overlooked internal diversity within the Chicano/a community. I contend that while the movement was constituted through diverse localized struggles, the mythohistorical was utilized to establish political identities and communities that created the national scope of the movement, allowing Chicanos/as with disparate interests and backgrounds to see themselves as a community and work in unison at key moments. Moreover, while these narratives of myth and history were deployed to create unity in struggle, they simultaneously reinforced patriarchal and homophobic aspects of the movement, hindering articulations of cultural citizenship by feminist and queer Chicanos/as. Therefore, as Chicana feminists and queer Chicanas fashioned models of participatory belonging within the imagined community, they did so by adopting and adapting mythohistorical tropes.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Peterson, Purdue University.

Subject Area

American studies|Hispanic Americans

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