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One A USE R’ S GU I DE TO POSTCOLON I A L A N D L AT I NO BOR DE R L A N D F IC T ION Using narrative theory—specifically the tools developed by narratology—to understand better how postcolonial and Latino borderland narrative fiction ticks is an important first move. Mieke Bal defines narratology as “the theory of narrative texts. A theory is a systematic set of generalized statements about a particular segment of reality. That segment of reality, the corpus, about which narratology attempts to make its pronouncements consists of narrative texts” (3). Already, distinctions of character slant and narrator filter, first- and multi-person narrator , implied author and ideal reader, narratee, time, duration, and mode allow us to break from the various hypostatized theme- and identitybased trappings outlined in the Introduction. The distinctions allow us to more fully appreciate the craft of certain postcolonial and Latino borderland authors’ idiomatic and particularized texturing of character , time, and place in ways that actively participate in shaping world literature. As we will see in the chapters that follow, authors including Roy, Ghosh, Kunzru, Smith, Rodriguez, and Gilb as well as various authorartists of comic books—Los Bros Hernandez, Rhode Montijo, and Frank Espinosa, among others—choose particular narrative approaches and techniques according to what they perceive as necessary to the act of narration and to the engagement of the reader’s or reader-viewer’s cognitive faculties. The decisions made and the paths taken are conditioned by innumerable factors. No detailed account of the author’s biography (her life experiences; her social, political, economic, and historical circumstances ; her gender and sexual orientation; her ethnic background and upbringing), accompanied by the most extensive account of the way the author has reacted toward every circumstance she has experienced, will ever explain why Smith, for example, chooses to begin White Teeth with the character Archie about to commit suicide or why Kunzru chooses A User’s Guide 15 to begin his novel The Impressionist with action aswirl in the middle of a great flood. Why these authors among others decide to present their narrations in the third person as opposed to the first—or even the plural character filter as with Roy. Why Rodriguez favors code switching in some stories and not in others. Why Gilb chooses words and rhythms that lack adornment and figuration. Why Roy is more inclined to tell multiple stories simultaneously and others prefer sequential chapters. Given that I want to avoid slipping into an “identity politics” approach as well as to sidestep that move that judges literary merit based on discussions of felicitous or infelicitous representation of race, ethnicity , gender, and so on, in the so-identified postcolonial and borderland experience I turn to those tools developed in “classical” narratology and “cognitive” narratology. My aim is to heighten our pleasure of reading postcolonial and Latino borderland novels, short stories, and comic books by getting to know better how they work and which procedures allow them to connect with our living realities, here (locally and countrywide ) as well as globally. In analyzing postcolonial and Latino borderland literature, I do not intend to exclude judgments of value and political and moral arguments. On the contrary. Again, there is good and bad postcolonial and Latino borderland narrative fiction, but I do not want to use a rule of measure whereby that deemed good and worthy of our attention is simply that authored by a postcolonial or borderland Other or because its sentimentalizing of a given identity politics moves us. Before moving into a discussion of the different narratological tools I consider useful in this analysis, first I want to expand on some of the key concepts and categories such as the particular, general, and universal. For all practical purposes, human beings are universally endowed with the same biological and psychological equipment. Therefore, at the basis of human activities, be they scientific, artistic, productive (prehistoric scavenging, hunting, gathering; Neolithic fishing and cultivating ; Modern Age manufacturing, building, and so on), one and the same anatomical, physiological, and neurological configuration is at work. It is this configuration that accounts for all our psychological, cultural, and sociohistorical universals. Take the senses. Sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch are by and large the same in all human beings. Their bioneurological function is identical, while their “education” varies among individuals and from one historic moment to another. For example, if [3.17.154.171] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 18:17 GMT...

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