In the Mean Time: Temporal Colonization and the Mexican American Literary Tradition

186 Pages·2020·5.157 MB·English

by  Erin Murrah-mandril

In the Mean Time
Postwestern Horizons
General Editor
William R. Handley
University of Southern California
Series Editors
José Aranda
Rice University
Melody Graulich
Utah State University
Thomas King
University of Guelph
Rachel Lee
University of California, Los Angeles
Nathaniel Lewis
Saint Michael’s College
Stephen Tatum
University of Utah
I N the
M E A N
T I M E
Temporal Colonization
and the Mexican American
Literary Tradition
Erin Murrah-M andril
University of Nebraska Press · Lincoln
© 2020 by the Board of Regents of
the University of Nebraska
An earlier version of chapter 1 was published as “Ruiz
de Burton’s ‘Contemporary Novel’: Multifarious
Time in The Squatter and the Don,” Aztlán: A
Journal of Chicano Studies 41, no. 2 (2016): 37–
63. © Regents of the University of California.
Published by the ucla Chicano Studies Research
Center Press. Reprinted with permission.
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Murrah- Mandril, Erin, author.
Title: In the mean time: temporal colonization
and the Mexican American literary
tradition / Erin Murrah- Mandril.
Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, [2020] | Series: Postwestern horizons |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2019032954 | isbn 9781496211828
(hardback) | isbn 9781496221711 (epub) | isbn
9781496221728 (mobi) | isbn 9781496221735 (pdf)
Subjects: lcsh: American literature— 20th
century— History and criticism. | American
literature— Mexican American authors— History
and criticism. | Space and time in literature. |
Mexican- American Border Region— In literature.
| Mexican Americans— Intellectual life.
Classification: lcc ps153.m4 m87
2020 | ddc 810.9/005— dc23
lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov /2019032954
Set in Garamond Premier by Mikala R. Kolander.
Designed by N. Putens.
For Chris
For all time

Contents
Preface
ix
Introduction: The Mean Time
of U.S. Modernity
1
1. Temporal Colonization: Getting Railroaded
in The Squatter and the Don
25
2. Progress in the Land of Poco Tiempo:
Miguel Antonio Otero’s Political Vision
49
3. Specters of Recovery: Temporal Economies
of Debt and Inheritance in Adina De Zavala’s
History and Legends of the Alamo
79
4. Modernity and Historical Desire:
Differential Time Consciousness in Caballero
105
Afterword: The Discontinuous Inheritance of
Mexican American Literature
135
Notes
147
References
155
Index
165
Preface
The experience of writing In the Mean Time has been as recursive as the his-
torical texts I explore in the book, and in many ways writing it has prompted
a personal rendition of literary- historical recovery. In the spring of 2017, well
into the production of In the Mean Time, I found a 1986 article by Hector A.
Torres titled “Discourse and Plot in Rolando Hinojosa’s The Valley: Narra-
tivity and the Recovery of Chicano Heritage.” Torres argues that The Valley
has a configurational plot rather than an episodic plot. The configurational
plot, Torres explains, is purposeful and whole, not anarrative, as some might
assume, and it constitutes a retrieval of the “most fundamental potentialities”
of our past (87). The terminology and theory were different, but the under-
lying idea was strikingly similar to what I had been working on for the past
few years. Hector Torres had been one of my graduate mentors, but he was
murdered in March 2010. He introduced me to literary theory over the course
of three graduate classes and many unofficial discussions over a pint of beer.
I never studied Chicana/o literature with him; I had taken his courses on
literary theory, grammar, and narratology. When I found Dr. Torres’s article,
it presented the all- too- common but very uncanny experience of seeing my
own thought process constituted in a past that I never knew about, like a
lost intellectual inheritance. It was a moment of recovery and the kind of
recursive repetition Dr. Torres often theorized.
If I am completely honest, the focus in chapter 3 on specters emerged from
a desire to channel Dr. Torre’s intellectual spirit, his impressive and perplexing
grasp of Derridian philosophy, while also reckoning with his untimely death.
ix