Vol. 5 No. 4 (April, 1995) pp. 141-142
RETHINKING THE BORDERLANDS: BETWEEN CHICANO CULTURE AND LEGAL
DISCOURSE by Carl Gutierrez-Jones. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995. 219 pp.
Reviewed by Marjorie S. Zatz, School of Justice Studies, Arizona
State University.
The borderlands evoke powerful images in the Southwest.
California's recent passage of Proposition 187, cuts in aid to
immigrants as part of the Republican "Contract With
America," and renewed building of fences and trenches along
the Mexican border all speak to the racial and cultural tensions
in the borderlands. Moreover, "Chicano history is the story
of territorial occupation through legal manipulation working in
concert with violence" (100). Yet as Gutierrez-Jones ably
demonstrates in this book, borders are not only geographic and
political sites. Beyond these obvious borderlands,
Gutierrez-Jones is concerned with the border as a site where
Chicano and Chicana responses to institutional dependency are
played out. Accordingly, he explores the borderlands between
material and cultural experiences, between institutions and
ideologies, between cultural studies and legal studies, and
between artistic discourse and legal discourse.
The dialects of conflict and negotiation, force and consent,
coercion and hegemony constitute a central theme in the book.
Gutierrez-Jones seeks to demonstrate how various institutional
mechanisms help to maintain subordinated social groups in a
fundamental and systematic dependency relationship. Having
established this, he goes on to articulate ways in which
particular Chicano and Chicana artists project their own versions
of legal culture and legal rhetoric as a critical arena of
resistance to dominant institutional power, including but not
limited to legal institutions. Like the artists he analyses, he
draws on typical cultural symbols and representations such as La
Malinche and La Llorona, as well as the corrido tradition.
Gutierrez-Jones begins in the first chapter with brief overviews
of Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race Theory, neoconservative
cultural strategies, and resistance strategies evidenced in
Chicano art. In the next chapter, he explores reformist
narratives that contribute to a national historical amnesia with
regard to Mexican and Chicano world views. This amnesia serves
assimilationist goals of bringing the disenfranchised into the
mainstream political, economic, and cultural arenas. In chapter
three, he deconstructs magical realist responses to this amnesia,
drawing heavily on Foucauldian disciplinary techniques and
dependency theory.
While issues of sexuality and gender are raised in earlier
chapters, it is in chapters four and five that they are
explicitly addressed. These chapters tackle questions about the
manipulation of desire and coercion, focusing particular
attention on rape, shame, homosocial bonding and mourning. I
found these chapters to be the most thought provoking,
particularly as he reworked machismo as instances of a homosocial
economy of desire which contributes to the oppression of
Chicanas. His emphasis on the psychoanalytic literature on
pathological mourning and sublimation, however, was less
compelling. In developing his genealogy of Chicana activist
mourning he notes in passing that this is "a focus not often
pursued
Page 142 follows:
by Chicana cultural critics who have worked hard to write
themselves out of the stereotypes that can be associated with
mourning as a Chicana's gender-bound work" (152). Beyond
writing themselves out of these stereotypes, my reading of the
original sources suggests that the women were trying to carve out
some autonomous space for themselves apart from their husbands
and lovers.
Gutierrez-Jones approaches his study of Chicano culture by
bringing a myriad of theoretical perspectives to bear on his
analysis of Chicano and Chicana literature and film. He weaves
together insights from Critical Legal Studies, Critical Race
Theory, dependency theory, feminist theories, psychoanalytic
theories, and Foucauldian discourse analysis. While each of these
perspectives aids in the inquiry, it is very difficult to
adequately integrate them, along with critiques of a dozen or so
narratives, into a short book (the text is only 172 pages).
As a result, Gutierrez-Jones's discussion of each perspective
remains superficial and rests on his reading of one or two
sources in the area. For example, the discussion of Critical
Legal Studies rests almost solely on Mark Kelman's overview.
Similarly, and of greater concern to me, Gutierrez-Jones's
discussions of Critical Race Theory rely solely on the work of
Kimberle Crenshaw and Patricia Williams. While their work has
been central to development of this perspective and while I
admire them greatly, in focusing solely on them Gutierrez-Jones
has ignored writings by other Critical Race scholars, including
Chicanos and Chicanas. Indeed, the only Chicano legal scholar
discussed is Gerald Lopez, and I would not categorize his book as
Critical Race Theory. Perhaps because Gutierrez-Jones is trying
to incorporate so many perspectives into his analysis, the
linkages between the theories and the narratives are not as
carefully developed as they might be.
I enjoyed much of RETHINKING THE BORDERLANDS. It will be
interesting reading for anyone familiar with the Chicano and
Chicana narratives analyzed and with the literature in legal and
cultural studies. Readers who are less familiar with Chicano/a
literature and films, however, will be forced to rely on
Gutierrez-Jones's deconstruction of them and, as he notes in
places, such interpretations are often contested. Similarly,
readers unfamiliar with the literature in cultural studies and
legal studies will likely get lost in the jargon.
Copyright 1995