Book Reviews: CARL GUTIÉRREZ-JONES, Rethinking the Borderlands: Between Chicano Culture and Legal Discourse. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 220
| Published date | 01 September 1996 |
| Author | Margaret E. Montoya |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399600500310 |
| Date | 01 September 1996 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
BOOK REVIEWS
CARL GUTIÉRREZ-JONES, Rethinking the Borderlands: Between Chicano Culture and
Legal Discourse. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, pp. 220.
Carl Guti6rrez-jones’s analysis of Chicano/a literature embraces an impressive array
of novels, stories, films, historiography and academic writing; an analysis that suc-
cessfully melds the early works of Critical Race Theory and critical legal studies with
Gramscian and Foucauldian critiques. Evading the debate about the literary canon by
assuming the importance of such literature, Gutierrez-Jones instead focuses on the
transgressive rhetorical strategies employed by Chicano/a artists.
A
primary theme of Rethinking the Borderlands is that Chicano/a artists produce
counterhegemonic narratives, challenging, rejecting and displacing the purportedly
objective interpretations of legal discourse embedded in such concepts as meritocracy,
consent and individualized rights. Guti6rrez-jones argues that the stereotypic and
racist constructions and representations of Chicanos-as-criminals through legal-
cultural discourses provide justifications for the surveillance and policing practices of
the state while simultaneously engendering a self-disciplining of Chicano/a desire,
conscience and imagination. The book is laced with the Gramsci-Foucauldian views
that the panoptic forces of the state function most effectively when articulating with
the consent of the subordinated community, a consent that emerges from the manipu-
lations of legal rhetoric. Guti6rrez-jones repeatedly shows how this hegemonic and
panoptic dynamic can be, and is, destabilized through the discursive and representa-
tional techniques of Chicano/a artists.
The borderlands metaphor in the title defines the spheres of cultural conflict where
the Chicano/a artist ’unable to affect directly the panoptic institutions of the Anglo
society ... relies on the uncanny ability of panoptic structures to be turned back on
the internalized desires engendered...
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