A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial GuatemalaMany Guatemalans speak of Mayan indigenous organizing as "a finger in the wound." Diane Nelson explores the implications of this painfully graphic metaphor in her far-reaching study of the civil war and its aftermath. Why use a body metaphor? What body is wounded, and how does it react to apparent further torture? If this is the condition of the body politic, how do human bodies relate to it—those literally wounded in thirty-five years of war and those locked in the equivocal embrace of sexual conquest, domestic labor, mestizaje, and social change movements? Supported by three and a half years of fieldwork since 1985, Nelson addresses these questions—along with the jokes, ambivalences, and structures of desire that surround them—in both concrete and theoretical terms. She explores the relations among Mayan cultural rights activists, ladino (nonindigenous) Guatemalans, the state as a site of struggle, and transnational forces including Nobel Peace Prizes, UN Conventions, neo-liberal economics, global TV, and gringo anthropologists. Along with indigenous claims and their effect on current attempts at reconstituting civilian authority after decades of military rule, Nelson investigates the notion of Quincentennial Guatemala, which has given focus to the overarching question of Mayan—and Guatemalan—identity. Her work draws from political economy, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, and has special relevance to ongoing discussions of power, hegemony, and the production of subject positions, as well as gender issues and histories of violence as they relate to postcolonial nation-state formation. |
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A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala Diane M. Nelson Limited preview - 1999 |
A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala Diane M. Nelson No preview available - 1999 |
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ALMG Alta Verapaz ambivalence anthropologist argue army articulate body image Casaus Arzú chapter Cholsamaj claims Cojtí colonial constituted Convention 169 counterinsurgency create deployed digenous discourse ethnic explore fantasy fluidarity gender gringa groups Guate Guatemala City guerrilla hacker human rights identifications Indian indigenous indigenous rights indigenous women interviews Jane Collier jokes Judith Butler K'iche Kaqchikel labor ladino land Maya-hacker Mayan activists Mayan cultural rights Mayan languages Mayan organizing Mayan women ment mestizaje mestizo modern mujer maya Myrna Mack nation-state Nebaj Nobel Nobel Peace Prize official participation peace popular position Prize production prosthetic Q'eqchi Quetzaltenango Quincentennial Quincentennial Guatemala race racial racism relations represent resistance Rigoberta Menchú sense Serrano sexual social solidarity Spanish struggle suggests Tecún Umán term territory tion tional traditional traje transnational unity University Press URNG villages violence woman
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Page 2 - The US -Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country — a border culture.