본문 바로가기
  • Home
Basic Search

Multiculturalism in Latin America and the Latino Society

이은아 1

1서울대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The last couple of decades have seen the proliferation of the discourse about multiculturalism, and the role played by literature in its constitution and development. This study attempts to trace the development of the discourses of mestizaje, hybridity and transculturation in relation to multiculturalism throughout Latin American and Latino society. In Latin America, the discourse of mestizaje and the question of nation building have been so intimately intertwined since post-independence era. Diverse societies created by mestizaje have been obliged to cope with the cultural, racial, and ethnic heterogeneity for the purpose of establishing national identity. While the discourse of mestizaje and hybridity paradoxically was historically used to imagine a common past and a homogeneous future, it is, yet, still deeply related to current discussion of multiculturalism due to attempts to reconcile cultural, racial, ethnic heterogeneity with national identity. The Latino writers who are dealt with here, such as Richard Rodriguez, Edmundo Paz-Soldán and Gloria Anzaldúa, are experiencing a process in which multicultural identities are being built and reconstructed in the stream of trans-americanism. They are producing diverse versions of the discourse of multiculturalism based on different ethnic backgrounds, which contribute to formulating the similarity and distinctiveness of their respective multicultural identities. Even though Rodriguez argues that North American Latinization is developing a mestizo and heterogeneous society by a process of miscegenation and cultural interaction, it may lead to a greater and more profoundly integrated common culture, and hybrid homogeneity. Unlike his contradictory reflection on multiculturalism, Anzaldúa sees the future as characterized by the proliferation of bicultural and multicultural identities by the simultaneous celebration of the border and permanence of cultural difference. Furthermore, Paz-Soldán emphasizes the importance of the inter-lingual and trans-american experience and challenges previously consolidated concepts of Latino identity and multiculturalism stereotyped by dominant Latino scholars. Now their multicultural identities in perpetual change demand the correction of the concept of nation as well as the idea of ‘Latin America’.

Statistics

  • 429 Viewed
  • 144 Downloaded

Tools

Issue List

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

Basic Search Advanced Search