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Authoring Ethnicized Subjects: Rigoberta Menchú and the Performative Production of the Subaltern Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Arturo Arias
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Abstract

The debate over Rigoberta Menchú's testimonio has centered on whether or not Menchú told the “truth” regarding details of her personal life. According to her critics, her “lies” discredit her testimony and reduce the moral authority of leftist intellectuals who teach testimonial texts. This focus on verifiable facts ignores the literary value of testimonios in general and the importance of Menchú's testimony in particular in a discursive war tied to cold war politics. This essay explores the problematics of truth, the nature of testimonio as a genre, and the relation between political solidarity and subaltern narrative. It also examines the function of Menchú's testimonio as a discourse on ethnicity and considers the relation among the anthropologist, the subaltern subject, and truth. The conclusion deals with the need to rethink the concept of identity, with the desires and fantasies of subjective transformation, and with the notion of identity politics.

Type
Talks from the Convention
Information
PMLA , Volume 116 , Issue 1: Special Topic: Globalizing Literary Studies , January 2001 , pp. 75 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2001

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