Thresholds of Illiteracy reevaluates Latin American theories and narratives of cultural resistance by advancing the concept of "illiteracy" as a new critical approach to understanding scenes or moments of social antagonism. "Illiteracy," Acosta claims, can offer us a way of talking about what cannot be subsumed within prevailing modes of reading, such as the opposition between writing and orality, that have frequently been deployed to distinguish between modern and archaic peoples and societies. This book is organized as a series of literary and cultural analyses of internationally recognized postcolonial narratives. It tackles a series of the most important political/aesthetic issues in Latin America that have arisen over the past thirty years or so, including indigenism, testimonio, the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, and migration to the United States via the U.S.–Mexican border. Through a critical examination of the "illiterate" effects and contradictions at work in these resistant narratives, the book goes beyond current theories of culture and politics to reveal radically unpredictable forms of antagonism that advance the possibility for an ever more democratic model of cultural analysis.
"This is an impressive study that covers a wide variety of theoretical and literary texts, some canonical and others not."
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
"Using indigenista novels, testimonio, border narratives and EZLN declarations as sites of intervention, Thresholds of Literacy aims at breaking the impasse between orality and literacy that for many years has shaped important areas of Latin American cultural and literary studies. Acosta demonstrates that, by insisting too much on difference, even critics with the best intentions end up reinforcin
University of California, Berkeley
"Abraham Acosta is fearless. Breathing new life into the well-worn contradictions of philosophical abstraction and political practice, speech and writing, hegemony and sub-alternity, he doesn't settle for splitting the difference. With nuance, verve, erudition and extraordinary breadth, Thresholds of Illiteracy brings a heterodox approach to old debates-indigenismo, testimonio, zapatismo, la fron
