1st Edition

Mobile and Entangled America(s)

Edited By Maryemma Graham, Wilfried Raussert Copyright 2016
    354 Pages
    by Routledge

    354 Pages
    by Routledge

    A superb combination of focused case studies and high level conceptual thinking, this volume is an important monument in the ongoing development of Inter-American studies The articles gathered here closely examine a wide variety of cultural phenomena implicated in the 'entanglements' which have defined the history of the Americas. From religious networks to music and dance, and across a range of literary and artistic works, the mobility of people, objects, and ideas in the Americas is expertly mapped. At the same time, the book represents a serious enterprise of theory-building. Drawing on the histories of postcolonial thought, mobility studies, and work on human migration, Mobile and Entangled America(s) clearly establishes a new interdisciplinary field attentive both to the complexities of cultural form and the pervasiveness of power relations. Each article stands as a significant piece of scholarship on its own, but all are in dialogue with each other. The result is a richly satisfying and important volume of cultural scholarship.



    Lists of Figures and Tables vii



    Notes on Contributors ix



    Acknowledgments xiii



    Introduction: Just a Small Step: From Jamaica Kincaid’s



    A Small Place to Mobile and Entangled America(s) 1



    Maryemma Graham and Wilfried Raussert



    PART I LITERARY AND CULTURAL MOBILITIES



    1 On Routes and Roots: Movement and Rootedness in



    Garifuna Culture 13



    Paula Prescod



    2 CircumCaribbean Sisterhood: Patterns of Migration in



    Cristina Garcia’s The Agüero Sisters 25



    John Lowe



    3 Tracing Afro Diasporic Histories: Translocational Storytelling



    and Entangled Afro Americas in Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass,



    Cypress & Indigo and Edwidge Danticat’s Brother I’m Dying 51



    Wilfried Raussert



    4 “My history is a creature nobody really believes in. My history is



    a foreign word.” Second-Generation Immigrant Identity in



    David Chariandy’s Soucouyant 73



    Miriam Brandel



    5 From Granny’s Knee to Graduate Seminar: The Travels of



    the Soucouyant 91



    Giselle Liza Anatol



    6 Translocating the Caribbean, Positioning Im/Mobilities:



    The Sonic Politics of Las Krudas from Cuba 103



    Julia Roth



    vi Mobile and Entangled America(s)



    PART II BIOCULTURAL AND NEW MEDIA MOBILITIES



    7 Intimate Ties: Biotic Mobility and Inter‑American Studies 131



    Rüdiger Kunow



    8 Tattoo Travels: On Mobilities and Mobilizations of



    American Skin Art 155



    Martin Butler



    9 United Colors of Belonging? Participatory Culture and



    Diversity 2.0 in the Crowd-sourced Documentary Life in a Day 167



    Sebastian Thies



    10 Transnational Forces, Technological Developments, and



    the Role of the State in the Mexican Audiovisual Sector 189



    José Carlos Lozano



    11 Mission Inverted: Inter-American Religious Flows and



    How to Capture Them 203



    Heinrich Wilhelm Schäfer



    PART III TRAVELING POLITICS, TRAVELING IDEOLOGIES,



    AND TRANSMIGRATIONS



    12 The Polysemic Use of Identity and Culture in International



    Migration: The Case of Central American Migration in Mexico 245



    Rodolfo Casillas



    13 The Mobility of Hope and Violence in Sin Nombre 265



    Josef Raab



    14 Mexican Indigenismo in a Hemispheric Context―Elements for



    a Historiography of Inter-American Entanglements in the



    First Half of the Twentieth Century 283



    Olaf Kaltmeier



    15 Boas Goes to Americas: The Emergence of Trans-American



    Perspectives on “Culture” 301



    Afef Benessaieh



    16 Moby-Dick and Globalization 321



    John Carlos Rowe



    Index 337

    Biography

    Maryemma Graham is Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas, Lawrence.



    Wilfried Raussert is Chair and Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies and Director of Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany.

    ’This volume transcends celebrations of multiculturalism and condemnations of globalization through its insightful reflections on the positive and negative aspects of entanglements in the Americas. Essays on literature, music, media, travel, and biocultural and spiritual mobilities explore issues of identity and displacement, mobility and stasis, rupture and growth. A timely collection that pushes the boundaries of Inter-American Studies.’ Catherine Leen, National University of Ireland, Maynooth ’A resolutely interdisciplinary Inter-American Studies collection by an international group of scholars in ongoing dialogue. So rigorously do the editors stir up the collection’s key concepts, mobility and entanglement, that the words stopped striking me as opposites about halfway through the introduction, and seemed to increase in dynamism as author after author pushed them together to spark new insights in a vast range of cultural studies across the Americas. Not a metaphor or map in sight, this is a disorientating collection in the best sense of the word.’ Sherrie Tucker, University of Kansas, USA