Represent the other to exclude him. The discursive construction of the Mexican-american in Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity by Samuel Phillips Huntington
Keywords:
mexican-american, national identity, language, culture, raceAbstract
The following article reflects on the ways in which Mexican-Americans are (re) presented in Who Are We? The challenges to America’s National Identity by Samuel Huntington. The American nation appears as an ontological and colorless (not white) category, beyond linguistic mediations and racial formations, that gains meaning through the binary and essentialist construction of Mexican-Americans as their racialized antipodes. Consequently, Mexican-Americans are incorporated into nationalist rhetoric only to be excluded again from the national vocabulary. Thus, an epistemic violence is engendered that hides both the discursive (political) production of the Mexican-Americans and their own participation in the dichotomous game that legitimizes the image, allegedly deracialized, of what is conceived as the “authentic (white) American”.
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