Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. [Vol. 3.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 23)

STUDIES - András Tarnóc: Ethnic Consciousness in Chicano Literature: The Voice of "La Raza".

Ill Chicano literature is a multicultural, postmodern cultural product. Its description of the Mexican-American experience at the rupture of Anglo and Mexican civilization places it in the category of resistant multiculturalism. It also describes a process during which the homeland becomes the borderland, entrapping the Chicano in a dilemma of opposing cultural demands assigning him the role of the "intercultural interpreter" (Pérez—Torres 141). In Reedway Dasenbrock's view literature has to meet two conditions in order to be qualified multicultural: an ability to perpetuate the experiences of multicultural societies along with being able "to inscribe the readers from other cultures inside their own textual dynamics" (Pérez—Torres 145). Chicano society is clearly multicultural demonstrated by its history and its function as a bridge spanning over several civilizations. Dasenbrock's second criterion prescribes an educational function to literature and Mexican-American literature's emphasis on ethnic pride through the revelation of the elements of a heroic, "usable past" adequately serves this purpose. Furthermore, Chicano literature meets Homi Bhabha's requirements of a multicultural mode of literary production being a movement between two or more cultural practices "without negating the positions and contradictions of power in those practices" (Pérez—Torres 57). As it was demonstrated neither its predecessor, the corrido, nor "El Movimiento" poetry itself aimed to eliminate cultural barriers between Anglos and Mexican-Americans, rather they strove for the illustration of the inequalities embedded in the status quo. Chicano poetry, displaying three main characteristics: the use of a "strange and minor" language reflecting cultural deterritorialization, an overtly social and political function, and the promotion of collective consciousness, also corresponds with Deleuze and Guattari's thesis concerning minor literatures (Pérez—Torres 216). The employment of calo or pocho and a frequent switching of linguistic codes, the migrant, prisoner, and rebel as agents of cultural empowerment along with the 83