Latino Literature and Biopolitics

The canonization of Latino literature is complicated because it does not follow a linear pattern of historcization. Kristen Silva Gruez reviews the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature (NALL) in an effort to demonstrate how canonocity cannot apply. The primary reason for this failure is that there is no prior anthology to compare it with. Gruez maintains that periodicity and canonicity generally evolve simultaneously, or in a chicken and egg relationship, but with NALL, there is only an egg (Gruez 336). Gruez effectively highlights the difficulties that NALL contends with by comparing the development of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature (NAAAL). NAAAL, she articulates, operates through periodicity and canonicity because it is organized around a main event: slavery. Furthermore, establishing a literary African American presence in the past is essential to its legitimacy.

            Latino literature, as opposed to African American, resists the need to stem from one major episode. Latino history stems from two hemispheres and is in “constant mututation” (Gruez 337). Due to the complex, multi-dimensional history it is difficult to organize in the traditional Norton model. To deal with this predicament, the editors divided it up into two parts: United States and Latin America (which has 21 parts), and then into subcategories of “Colonization” and “Annexation.” This method presents further problems as it lacks revolutionary texts and others that would function more effectively as delineators. Moreover, the anthology is aimed towards an American market and many of the texts are translated to English, but much of the integrity is lost in translation. Ultimately, Gruez determines that despite these moments of inadequacy, the NAAL serves as a marker for “middle class acceptance” and similar to the NAAAL, it is symbol of Latino existence in literary history: “the unanswered question of what it was seems besides the point” (Gruez 340).

              In thinking about the institution within Bleak House, I am reminded of Nancy Armstrong’s article “Gender Must Be Defended” in which she discusses the function of biopolitics. The practice during Victorian England emerged through the management of disease and the government’s sentiment that there were those who were permitted to live, and those who were let to die. Dickens challenges this apparatus by having Esther contract smallpox. Although she survives, it temporary blinds--and permanently disfigures her. Armstrong points out: “Like the fog and sewage, disease connects those protected by domestic enclosures with those excluded from them. In so doing, the contagion that disfigures Esther displaces the discourse of class warfare with what Foucault describes as a biological and medical recoding of race” (Armstrong 538). The institution that deems certain members acceptable or unacceptable is altered by the contagion that spreads among all social classes within the novel. However, even though the domestic space ceases to protect Esther from disease, the novel contradicts this notion. Jo, who is Esther’s diseased counterpart but social opposite, does not survive the illness, arguably, because of poverty. Esther, on the other hand, has round the clock care and a comfortable home to aid her recovery. Indeed, Dickens shows the essence of contagion, but ultimately restores the individuals to their respective social classes.

            To connect Dickens' complication of biopolitics to Gruez’s article, the attempt to canonize Latino literature demonstrates an effort to resist the subordinate position within American literature as a whole. Yet, as Gruez points out, Latino literature cannot fit into the confines of the Norton structure. By failing to take into account language barriers and pertinent events, the effort falls short. Similarly, disease among all classes disrupts the biopolitical structure, but resumes its authority when the domestic space provides safety to thwart its grasp.