Transgressing Liminality: Exploring the Latin American urban Self through Resistance and Remembrance in 21st century Americas

Abstract

The paper explores the quest for identity through reception, resistance, and remembrance, as expressed in the langscape of 21st century Latin American poets. The paper also addresses the points of contact between the Latin American Self and the cultural Other(s) within the urban space, re-visiting the changing dynamics of the Self -Other, the Global-local, centre-margin, and so on. The oeuvres of contemporary Latin American poet Monica de la Torre and Indigenous womxn poets L. M. Silko and Joy Harjo is re-visited. The interface between the newly formed Latin America and the colonial Other is examined to trace the trajectory of oppression where the economically superior ‘centre’ continues to violate the cultural Other – the ‘margin’ – a threshold marked by a “no-exit” situation of socio-economic and cultural Otherness. The question of Indigenous identity in 21st century metropolis of the Americas is studied through the reading of selected works, narrating the complexities of identity-claim within the cityscape, and exploring transgression of the liminal space of “forced forgetting” where remembrance of one’s Self (individual and/or communal) is transformed into an act of resistance.