This dissertation explores the ways in which contemporary Latin American narratives address the issue of marginal bodies and subjectivities by producing intricate aesthetic and ethical projects that, from a non-representational perspective, challenge the idea of one-dimensional meanings and clear-cut social and discursive identities. The argument arises from the hypothesis that these narratives articulate themselves to a contemporary historical moment marked by a social and epistemological crisis, a crisis that has to do with both current uncertainties about the future and what seems to be an historical impossibility of solving the social problems and deep economic inequalities that neoliberalism has brought to outrageous extremes. Establishing textual connections and thematic encounters between voices that emerge from different standpoints and enunciation sites, the narratives under discussion pay special attention to those impoverished and marginal bodies that dwell at the margins of our contemporary urban societies. These bodies are generally considered useless and disposable, when not contaminated and corrupted, from the point of view of the ideological prevailing system. They constitute spaces where unfixed identities are constantly being displayed and performed and where historical failure has inscribed painful scars and produced social and physical ruins. At the same time, these narratives are concerned with the problem of language and its capacity to depict a reality that cannot be completely contained by human knowledge and symbolizing devices. These narratives do not pretend simply to reflect an ongoing crisis and to represent the marginal bodies it has produced: they experiment with language in generating complex textual 'rhizomes' that impugn linear stories and contradict the normative space of fixed semantic oppositions. Language itself becomes a malleable dimension that establishes intriguing connections between textual compositions and marginal realities that, censored and usually silenced by the hegemonic and normative discourses, demand to be recognized, named and exposed by linguistic and literary forms that can interrupt 'normal' discourses and affect the comfortable stance of uncritical readers.

Identity has become a major interest for researchers in the areas of linguistic anthropology and sociolinguistics. Recent understandings of identity emphasize its malleability and fluidity. This conceptualization of identities as malleable comes from the realization that speakers relate strategically to propositions and their interlocutors in order to achieve their communicative goals. This study is an exploration of the (co-)construction of identities in an institutional context, specifically in the Cerro Maravilla hearings. I examine the interactions between the Senates main investigator, Héctor Rivera Cruz, and five witnesses in order to explore how identities were created and how speakers managed the interactions. In chapter 2, I discuss the theoretical framework and the literature. The concepts of identity, linguistic ideologies, power, discourses, indexicalities, and stances are discussed. Chapter 3 is a literature review of studies concerned with language in the legal context, particularly in trials. In chapter 4, I provide a historical background to contextualize the Cerro Maravilla events and the Senate hearings. The next chapter is the methodology. In Chapter 6, I present the analyses of the interactions between Rivera Cruz and five witnesses. In chapter 7, I discuss the findings. Chapter 8 is the conclusion. The present study supports the notion that power is better understood as emergent in interactions, even when interactional resources are unequally available to speakers. However, it is not independent of discourses that assign value to ways of speaking and ways of interacting. I claim that speakers combine stances in creative and unexpected ways, constructing memorable identities. The overarching question that motivated this study was: Why did people talk about Rivera Cruzs performance and way of speaking? I argue that the answer lies in his creative stance taking through which he was able to provoke a clash of linguistic ideologies in an unexpected and unconventional way. I argue that Rivera Cruzs performance attests to the creativity and the immense possibilities that individuals have for creating identities, while this individuality is still connected with discourses that exist in the broad society.

Assuming that in one way or another Latin American literature deals with the shock caused by the conquest and colonization of the New World, my dissertation reads this literature by paying special attention to texts that by undermining Western hegemonic logics, successfully perform decolonization. It is in the process of drawing this alternative map for reading Latin American literatures, that I have realized the extent to which memory becomes a key factor in decolonizing literary projects. It is a special configuration of memory that keeps literature loyal to the lettered citys principles, turning it into a colonizing device. In that regard, it is assumed that the only way to deal with otherness is to wipe out any sign of difference that may eventually disturb hegemonic discourses. Memory, however, can also work in a different direction, uncovering alliances between writing and power, and by so doing confronting dominant narratives with other rationalities. In this sense, memory proves to be strongly linked to the creation, reproduction, updating and deconstruction of cultural imaginaries. Understood as a tool of decolonization, memory opens the way to alternative epistemologies. Trying to identify epistemological differences between projects of decolonization based on specific uses of memory, I have selected a body of texts produced in a diverse set of geopolitical areas. First, I concentrate on literary works emerged from locations where a massive indigenous population proactively affects the formation of a given national culture, producing the emergence of subjectivities and forms of socialization other than those legitimized by cultural and historical elites. In a second approach, I examine how a similar process takes place in zones with reduced indigenous settlements and/or where Indians have largely been made invisible by national power centers. In these cases, literature achieves a decolonizing performance by contaminating itself with the same cultural logics that the elites seek to isolate. In this way, nations that imagine themselves as clean of the Indian, are nevertheless able to produce a literature that unexpectedly questions hegemonic discourses by indirectly making connections with indigenous rationalities.

This dissertation explores the figure of the hero in Latin American popular culture from a postcolonial-subalternist perspective. In the West, the conventional hero functions as a role model, defends principles of justice and order, and symbolically represents the state or at least the status quo. But what happens whenand wherethe state is seen as unfair instead of just, weak instead of strong, and dangerous instead of benevolent? Is the hero different in Latin America, a marginal region in the world system living a heterogeneous modernity, as compared with the hero of a central, hegemonic power? Examining a number of real-life and fictional charactersfrom superheroes to criminalsthis dissertation aims to understand the role these icons play in the historical processes of nation building, hegemonic domination, and subaltern resistance throughout the region. The first section deals with two hugely popular Mexican superheroes: Santo el Enmascarado de Plata and Chapulín Colorado. Santo is a straightforward, law-and-order superhero, this during a time in which Mexico and other Latin American countries still believed in, and pursued, economic progress via the developmentalist model, with a strong state, a very instrumental culture industry backed by the government, and so forth. Chapulín, by contrast, is the opposite of the regular superhero: weak, cowardly, and not too bright. If he is to be read as a national allegory, it certainly shows a different face of the Mexican state, in a time in which developmentalism was undoubtedly on its way out. The second part examines the two best selling musical genres in Latin America (and in the Hispanic market in the U.S.): the Mexican-U.S. Southwestern narcocorrido and the Puerto Rican-Nuyorican reggaetón, especially with respect to their treatment of drug lords, in the first case, and gang leaders, in the second. On many occasions, and in many ways, that treatment consists in depicting these outlaws as heroes, this in a post-communist, post-revolutionary, post-developmentalist world, and crucially, in a world after the complete failure and the devastating effects of neoliberalism in Latin America.

This dissertation explores Clarice Lispector's writing in three of her novels: A Paixão Segundo G.H., Àgua Viva, and A Hora da Estrela. The critical studies on this author typically center on three distinct points: (1) an examination of mysticism in relation to silence, (2) an underscoring of social criticism in Lispector's work, (3) a focus on the female role and its fractures. Taking a different path, and following poststructuralist thought, I demonstrate that writing constructs itself in order to be destroyed. Writing's "death" appeals to an aperture into the Other, so that it can inhabit a continuous life, which includes life and death. This aperture implies a sacrifice of writing's grammatical logic, a rupture with a rational order, and a contestation of the cumulative/capitalist system from a plethora of characters. To what extent, then, is this writing an act of love? And what are the ways in which it is constructed to be such an act of love? The answer can be summarized in one word: desire. Lispector's language is saturated with desire (desire for other human beings, for things, for animals, for God, etc.). This writing thus stretches itself to its limits for a desire that, paradoxically, does not necessarily go outside of a system, but inside of the intimate life of the characters, things, or animals. In this sense, the author goes back to the most organic level of life. From that place she inhabits and feeds the characters, the writing, and the readers with the power of life. Beyond the thematic of love in Lispector's work, I argue that language itself surrenders to desire; love therefore circulates within the writing, which breaks free of the "secure" trends of language, defying its logic, so that it comes to be possible to feel the silent identity of the world. Clarice Lispector's fiction mesmerizes us with what might be called obscure passages, which find their raison d'être in the strength of sensation rather than logic.

This work is a study of the relationship between literature and social criticism in nineteenth century Latin America. More specifically, it is an analysis of the critique of power as it was conveyed by authors from Mexico, Brazil and Argentina through literary genres such as the drama, the short story, the chronicle, and the political satire. It argues that through an aesthetic correlation between certain literary forms (mainly, the tragedy and the animal fable) and morality, these authors exercised a critique of the hegemonic discourse on social and racial domination in their societies. Using the figures of the slave and of the animal, these literary texts were not only criticizing governments and social practices, but also deconstructing the old aristocratic ethics in which the Enlightenment had founded the very legitimation of the modern state. Taking the figures of the slave and the animal as structural and analytical axes, this dissertation is devoted to the reading of six works. In the first section ("Slaves") it deals with three dramas that, invoking the relationship between tragedy and ethics, are proposed as political interventions that deconstruct the figure of the master and its moral contradictions in three post- colonial national scenarios. Despite the fact that its authors belonged to the political elites of their countries, these plays, Mãe (1860), by José de Alencar, Atar-Gull (1855), by Lucio V. Mansilla, and La venganza de la gleba (1906), by Federico Gamboa, are a unique access to the tensions and disarticulations within the national dominant ideologies of the times, and end up showing how the figure of the slave was already necessary in Eurocentric discourse on legitimate iv power and, ultimately, on the definition of the human. In the second section ("Fabulous Animals"), this dissertation analyses El gallo pitagórico (1842), by Juan Bautista Morales; Cuentos (1880), by Eduarda Mansilla, and chronicles and stories by Machado de Assis (c.1891- 1906). It argues that the talking animal in these texts (contrary to the norms of European fable) becomes a powerful vehicle for a moral critique that faces the discourse on humanism with its own failures and contradictions.

There is an evident under-representation of Hispanic students in Gifted and Talented (GT) programs. This is due to several reasons including lack of valid instruments, biased standardized tools, biased teacher perceptions, and misinterpretation of tests scores among others. The need to develop and/or validate instruments that reflect students?? cultural backgrounds has become a priority in the U.S. today. The purpose of this study was to analyze the reliability and validity facets of the Hispanic Bilingual Gifted Screening Instrument (HBGSI) developed by Irby and Lara-Alecio (1996), more specifically, the split-half reliability and the concurrent validity when correlated to the Bilingual Verbal Abilities Test (BVAT). Participants were 527 students from two elementary schools in Texas. Students were administered the HBGSI in May 2003 and a reduced sample was administered the BVAT in the latter part of 2003 and the beginning of 2004. Results were analyzed, interpreted and discussed. The researcher found that the HBGSI has evidence of high reliability coefficients using Guttman, Spearman-Brown and Cronbach??s alpha ranging from .93 to .97. Concurrent validity was computed using Pearson correlation coefficient r =.39. Additionally, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted and revealed the existence of 5 factors. Among the primary limitations is the generalizability of the findings. Readers should use caution in applying the findings of this study to other settings and populations. Further research is recommended to establish the concurrent validity of the HBGSI with other achievement measures. In conclusion, there has been a contemporary move to the incorporation of inclusive screening instruments for use with language minority students. This movement suggests the inclusion of portfolio and performance assessment, checklists, and teacher observations in addition to standardized measures. The HBGSI has shown promising results in the arena of Hispanic gifted identification. This instrument is recommended to be used at the first stage of the screening process of potential Hispanic GT students. This study provided insight into the improvement of practices and identification of Hispanic bilingual students.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College, 2007. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-53).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 165-179). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009 / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 168-180).