In La Communauté desoeuvrée (1983) French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy describes how a community is creating by bringing its members together under a collective identity. The invention of myths, such as the myth of racial superiority and the mythic revolutionary community, functions to sustain the hegemonic dominance wielded in Haiti by the United States and later by François Duvalier, the Porfiriato and its aftermath in Mexico, and white society in the United States Deep South. These myths often engender policies founded in the inhospitable treatment of those who are deemed lesser or other. Nancys conception of being singular plural posits that our exposure to the other remedies the mythic community, because such a configuration requires the perpetual exposure of the self to others, which maintains the fluidity of interpersonal relations and in turn keeps the community future-oriented. Jacques Derridas De la grammatologie (1967), Force de loi (1990), and Politiques de lamitié (1994) offer a reconceptualization of the political implications of subjectivity, community, and responsibility allows us to identify individual behaviors that can foster the development of a democracy to come and which also align with Nancys re-inscription of community.
This project examines how the mythic community is portrayed in René Depestres Le Mât de cocagne and Un arc-en-ciel pour lOccident chrétien, Mariano Azuelas Los de abajo, Carlos Fuentess La región más transparente del aire and Gringo viejo, and Ernest Gainess A Gathering of Old Men and A Lesson Before Dying. The authors representations of racial disharmony, marginalization, and violence function as a critique of colonialism, the mythic multicultural American community, and of imperialist capitalist hegemonic patriarchy to paraphrase bell hookss term. This project explores how the reverence for certain myths is linked to a rigid conception of hegemonic masculinity in which manhood is synonymous with domination. Thus, it is necessary to identify the conditions that marginalized men cultivate to achieve masculine subjectivity, and how patriarchal hegemonic masculinity may be challenged by new formulations of masculinities, which may allow such marginalized men to resist totalitarian powers and foster the sort of communal existence founded upon peace and tolerance of the Other.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11092016-114658 |
| Date | 06 December 2016 |
| Creators | Zimmer, Jacqueline Nicole |
| Contributors | Russo, Adelaide, Raffoul, Francois, Otero, Solimar, McCann, Bryan, Cabal, Stacey |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11092016-114658/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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