Cultural Nationalism and Chicano Literature in the Eighties

Abstract

eighties, I would like to present a few preliminary considerations. The first of two points made here is directed toward the inherent limitations of criticism and those of the critic's role. The second point focuses on the freedom of the artist and the essential originality of the creative act. Critics, like other readers, are certainly entitled to speculate on the future of Chicano literature in the spirit of open dialogue and critical debate. However, it should be remembered that despite the many common interests and shared activities of critics and artists, a major distinction between the two exists. This distinction serves to mark an important difference between these two closely related-possibly, to a certain degree, interdependent-functions. Critics, as opposed to creative writers, are essentially past oriented. That is, the proper function of the literary critics is to respond to what has already been produced. Critics respond to what exists as a concrete reality and a product. Creative writers, on the other hand, are future oriented in that they deal in actualizing the imagined, the inspired, and, most importantly, the unique and the individual-the new. What critics may have pronounced earlier about the limits of realism, magical or otherwise, in the early seventies applied only to what they had observed before the appearance of The Road to Tamazunchale by Ron Arias. Certain stylistics only as they had been known before Arias were exhausted. Arias created anew. Critics speak necessarily of the qualities and attributes of finished works-of ideas as they have already been expressed and embodied in completed works. This contrast between the world of past experience (a world shared by both artists and critics) and the specific content and style of an individual work highlights the special nature of creative writing, distinguished from that of criticism. While artists may become involved with and utilize unoriginal and possibly even questionable intellectual attitudes or concepts, the completed work is not necessarily flawed. Artists enjoy almost unrestricted freedom because the work ultimately exists in its own right; it must be approached on its own terms. For example, ideas and terms such