What is Latinx?

Thursday, January 23, 2020

This week, our class began its examination of monsters and hauntings in Latinx literature by laying a foundation for U.S. Latinx literature and the use of the term itself. For this introductory week, I assigned three essays: Nicole M. Guidotti-Hernández’s “Affective Communities and Millennial Desires; Latinx, or Why My Computer Won’t Recognize Latina/o,” Nicole Trujillo-Pagán’s “Crossed out by LatinX: Gender Neutrality and Genderblind Sexism,” and Alan Pelaez Lopez, “The X In Latin Is A Wound, Not a Trend.”

Before we broke-down each of these authors arguments about the use of “Latinx,” I laid the foundation for Latinx literature and Latinx Studies in the U.S. The construction of the Latinx literary canon began in the debates within the university in the 1960s and 1970s that led to the institutionalization of Ethnic Studies and their subdivision into what we know now as African American studies, Asian American studies, and most recently Latino/a Studies. The incorporation of literature by and about people of color within the university classroom has seen a long struggle that could take an entire semester to unpack. However, for our purposes, I highlighted how the rise of Chicana feminism and books by Mexican American women such as Sandra Cisneros and Gloria Anzaldúa, Cuban American writers such as Cristina García, and Puerto Rican writers like Piri Thomas and the Nuyorican poets have paved the way for the contemporary writes that we will examine in the semester. Latinx literature, as I explained, is a field comprised of many ethno-national and racial groups (Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Central American, etc.) and, as such, the term “Latinx” is both capacious and limiting in its attempt to define such a homogenous group.

These three essays, I believe, provide students with a good overview of the various differing opinions with Latino/a/x Studies about the use of “Latinx.” As Guidotti-Hernandez explains, the use of “Latinx” emerges in millennial digital culture that demonstrates an ethics of caring and inclusion. This affective community is antiessentialist and shows the power of inclusion and diversity. Most convincing, for me, is how, while we should investigate how we arrived at the term, the excessive feeling within “Latinx” puts pressure on whiteness and Latino/a categories simultaneously, carrying the affective overload for that which is not fully recognized (149). Most importantly, for Guidotti-Hernandez, “Latinx” is productive for its community building capacities.

Trujillo-Pagán, on the other hand, explores how “LainX” undermines the struggles to understand gendered experience, obfuscates the role of patriarchy, is “ill-defined,” and masquerades as inclusion. In this essay, what I find the most convincing, is how Trujillo-Pagán questions if the simple changing of language can actually change behavior. Students in class, pushed against this question, however, asking if perhaps the simple act of thinking of the change in language leads to ultimate changes in behavior. They questioned if, as Trujillo-Pagán herself asked, changing language is a bandaid fix for larger systemic forms of oppression and violence.

In Pelaez’s essay, students found a middle-ground between Guidotti-Hernandez and Trujillo-Pagán: showing how the excessive possibilities GH finds in the “X” also always already marks the term as flawed and replete with violence (as TP stipulates). The “X” for Pelaez is, importantly, not for everyone, but exclusively for trans and queer communities. The X exposes violence, and the long history of settler colonialism, gendered violence, anti-blackness, and the nonsensical nature of living in a Latinx body.

Next week, ENGL 3952 will explore the use of representations of monsters in our culture through Jeffery Jerome Cohen’s “Monster Theory (Seven Theses)” and an excerpt from J. Jack Halberstam’s Skin Shows. I asked students to consider the following questions as they read: why do we turn to monsters? What do they help us explore about our historically specific moment? What do monsters allow us to see about ourselves that “realist” representations do not? Stay tuned!