postcolonial political philosophy and decolonial political theory
Revista de Estudios de Género y Sexualidades
Journal of Gender and Sexuality Studies
Poets, Philosophers, Lovers, On the Writings of Giannina Braschi
Ed. by Frederick Luis Aldama and Tess O’Dwyerr with preface by Ilan Stavans
Michigan State University Press
Volume 50, Issue 1-2, 2024, pp. 256-258
Postcolonial philosophy and literature
BOOK REVIEW
This important critical collection is largely dedicated to Giannina Braschi’s United States of Banana (henceforth called USB; Amazon Crossing, 2011), a text permeated by her experience of 9– 11. At the time, Braschi lived in an apartment a few blocks from the twin towers in New York City; in USB she wrote of her close encounter with wreckage spilling from the twin towers that day, as well as her profound meditation on the events and their aftermath. Her other works, Yo-Yo Boing! (Latin American Literary Review Press, 1998; English, Amazon Crossing, 2011), and early collections of poetry, included in El imperio de los sueños (1988; Empire of Dreams) are reread here in the light of USB, her most recent work of mixed- genre prose. Thirteen essays address Braschi’s ideas and themes of language, identity, politics, and philosophy, situated in the words of characters of world literature and categories of world political philosophy and aesthetics. Of most relevance for the members of AEGS are five chapters in the section opening the book called “Vanguard Forms and Latinx Sensibilities.” Here, Madelena Gonzalez writes about Braschi’s “resistance to the commodification of culture” in USB; then in “Rompiendo Esquemas,” John Rio Riofrio sees a tale of “catastrophic bravery” in USB, and concludes that the work “is a sustained meditation on contentment and freedom” regarding “the bravery to embrace both critical thought and discomfort” in our challenging post 9– 11 times (41).
[book review of postcolonial political philosophy and fiction]
Though never simple in its ideas, Anne Ashbaugh’s contribution, “Exile and Burial of Ontological Sameness: A Dialogue between Zarathustra and Giannina” is supremely useful for understanding many major philosophical entities, characters, and concepts in Braschi’s USB. Ashbaugh asserts the presence of a “constant motion” that “prevents analysis, making it impractical to resort to traditional hermeneutic strategies” (43). As a reader she finds pleasure in the impossibility of delving deeper and instead “allowing the text to move according to Braschi’s circuitous grace” (42). Characters like Segismundo, Rubén Darío, and Hamlet converse with the Persian philosopher Zarathustra, she explains, working to give readers a platform to understand “why the colonization of a people is as complicated as their liberation” (47).
In one of the essays dedicated to an earlier work, “Yo- Yo Boing! Or Literature as a Translingual Practice,” Francisco Moreno Fernández provides a fascinating argument for considering Braschi’s later works as “translingual,” rather than bilingual or some sort of other formulation of ‘beyond the bilingual.’ He further asserts that:
[W]e will never understand Yo-Yo Boing! by employing the labels of Spanglish and code-switching exclusively. It is not . . . a form of rebellion; it is not about knowing more or less English or finding the exact word in either language at any given moment. It is about being liquid and translingual and living in a border reality where expression is adapted to the environment so that it is perfectly in sync with a globalized and ‘super- diverse’ reality that surrounds us, a reality that is not fixed, which has no unique or stable referents. (61)
Referencing Suresh Canagarajah’s Translingual Practice (2013), Li Wei and Ofelia Garcia’s Translanguaging (2014), and Mary Louise Pratt’s “Linguistic Utopias” (1991), among other works, Moreno- Fernández argues that the phenomenon of translanguaging has been amply studied in pedagogical settings, but it is greatly under recognized in literature. Here we see that Ashbaugh’s idea of “constant motion” and flux in USB was performed previously in Yo-Yo Boing!, in Braschi’s use of language(s), in her linguistic fluidity.
Section II: “The Persuasive Art of Dramatic Voices” contains four essays by prominent feminist critics Cristina Garrigós, Laura R. Loustau Anias, Elizabeth Lowry, and Daniela Daniele that explore such important topics as voice, magic, symbolism, and gamification, and not merely Braschi’s theatricality. The final section, “Intermedial Poetics and Radical Thinking,” is a miscellany of chapters: Dorian Lugo Bertrán addresses hybridity; Ronald Mendoza-de Jesús tack les the thematic pair of freedom and sovereignty; and Francisco José Ramos speaks on “The Holy Trinity: Money, Power and Success.” In addition, love, liberty, and the pursuit of meaningful wordplay are the major themes of Rolando Pérez’s interview with the author in the book’s final chapter. Braschi is quoted as feeling that she is three beings, a poet-philosopher, an actor, and a child: Nietzsche, Hamlet, and Giannina (173).
Although I have given preference here to the articles in this collection that helped me to understand Braschi’s philosophical, linguistic, and aesthetic contributions in her most recent works, all these chapters are of high caliber and, when needed, have been well translated by Tess O’Dwyer, who, in addition to being a co-editor, is also Braschi’s literary translator. Frederick Luis Aldama’s introduction is helpful as well. These essays supply a need among readers for pleasure and among scholars for analysis because reading Braschi requires knowledge of both English and Spanish and more than a casual acquaintance with both world literature and history. This critical volume aids those of us who welcome challenging reading, yet wish to understand what we read to the greatest extent possible.
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/26/article/977779/pdf
This is a welcome and well-conceived volume on the extraordinary work of Giannina Braschi, a Puerto Rican writer and consummate New Yorker whose creative decolonizing of aesthetics and culture deserves sustained critical engagement. . . . It is a testimony to the editors and contributors of Poets, Philosophers, Lovers that they are able to convey the energy, wit, and aesthetic nuance of Braschi’s timely interventions. American Book Review
Postcolonial Political Philosophy Resources
Links to books and websites dedicated to Postcolonial Political Philosophy. [AI]
Postcolonial and decolonial political philosophy.
1. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options
- Author: Walter D. Mignolo
- Description: A premier text in Latin American decolonial theory. Mignolo (an Argentine semiotician and philosopher) argues that “modernity” and “coloniality” are two sides of the same coin. He outlines how Western political philosophy has long cloaked imperial expansion under the guise of progress, proposing “decolonial epistemic disobedience” as a political path forward for the Global South.
- Publisher Link: Available via Duke University Press.
2. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution
- Author: C. L. R. James
- Description: A masterpiece of Caribbean political philosophy and historiography. James, a Trinidadian Marxist theorist, analyzes the Haitian Revolution (1791–1804). The text functions as an early, profound critique of the Enlightenment, revealing how European concepts of liberty and rights were fundamentally hypocritical until actualized by the self-liberation of enslaved people in the Caribbean.
- Publisher Link: Available via Vintage Books / Penguin Random House.
3. Politics of Liberation: A Critical Global History
- Author: Enrique Dussel
- Description: Written by one of the absolute giants of Latin American Liberation Philosophy, this text re-evaluates global political history from the perspective of the periphery (specifically Latin America). Dussel systematically dismantles Eurocentric political paradigms to construct an alternative blueprint for political agency grounded in the material realities of the excluded and oppressed.
- Publisher Link: Available via SCM Press or Stanford University Press.
Encyclopedia entries Latin American Philosophy
1. “Latin American Philosophy” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Authors: Jorge J. E. Gracia and Manuel Vargas
- Scope: This extensive entry contextualizes the development of philosophical thought across Central and South America. It traces how regional thinkers moved from digesting European scholasticism and positivism toward creating an authentic, localized political philosophy that confronts the ongoing legacy of colonial dependency.
- Access Link: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Latin American Philosophy
2. “Ignacio Ellacuría” — Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Author: Michael E. Lee
- Scope: A thorough philosophical overview of Ignacio Ellacuría, a central philosopher-theologian of liberation in El Salvador. The entry breaks down his political critique of structural injustice, his concepts of “historicization” (applying philosophical concepts to concrete political realities), and the role of the university in socio-political transformation.
- Access Link: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Ignacio Ellacuría
3. “Latinx Philosophy” — Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Author: Lori Gallegos and Francisco Gallegos
- Scope: This article bridges Latin American thought with its diaspora, examining how coloniality, borders, and trans-American identities affect political ontology and ethics. It evaluates major debates concerning cultural assimilation, racialization, and decolonial resistance frameworks.
- Access Link: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Latinx Philosophy
postcolonial philosophy, Latinx philosophy, Hispanic American philosophy, decolonial political theory, Latin American women philosophers, Puerto Rican philosophy books, Puerto Rican philosophers, postcolonial political theory, postcolonial political philosophy