Decolonizing Straight Temporality Through Genre Trouble in Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones

Autores

  • Eliana de Souza Ávila UFSC

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2014n67p21

Resumo

 

Framing genre trouble (McKenzie 2006) as a decolonial methodology, this paper considers the relevance of Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones (1998) for reading migrant texts against the grain of straight temporality which sustains the coloniality of power (Lugones 2007). Scrutinizing historiographic suppression, Danticat’s migrant text interrupts the chrononormative portrayal of the Trujillo genocide of Haitian workers in the Dominican Republic as a reality pertaining to an obsolete past and to the geocultural margins alone. Read in the aftermath of the testimonio controversy, it may thus decenter the ongoing deflection of attention from Rigoberta Menchú’s impact on the geocultural structures that sanction ongoing military intervention and genocide by refocusing on historiography as a terrain of relentless decolonial contestation rather than prescriptive narrative closure.

Biografia do Autor

Eliana de Souza Ávila, UFSC

Eliana de Souza Ávila is Associate Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, where she conducts various teaching, research, and outreach activities. Ávila has worked at analyzing and elaborating queer perspectives at the intersection of decolonization, counter-ableism, and epistemic translation studies in dialog with social movements and artistic practices. She currently coordinates the Research Group Queer Perspectives in Debate (CNPq/UFSC). E-mail: elavila.ufsc@gmail.com

Publicado

2014-12-17