In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 2 Narrative and Descriptive Discourse The Autobiographical“I”and Cultural Preconstructs Concerned with Space The narratives created by González, Jaramillo,Wilbur-Cruce, and Ponce present the reader with four heterogeneous life stories. Each text presents various layers of meaning, the first of which has to do with narrative discourse that is concerned with the autobiographical “I” and the symbolic spaces she occupies during her life course.However,these border autobiographies not only present life stories through the voice of an autobiographical“I”; at another level each is concerned with the autobiographer in relation to a cultural collectivity.This level of meaning can be understood through an interpretation of descriptive discourse that refers to such topics as land, home, family genealogy, and education, as well as religious and cultural practice. As we have seen,each of the authors considered here either explicitly or implicitly has a specific audience in mind as she writes. Her text may at once be directed to those who are closest to her or those who have little knowledge of MexicanAmerican history and cultural practice.Each also seems to be addressing those readers who, like herself, have experienced the constraints of traditional roles assigned to women. Key to understanding each narrative text,then,is the identification and interpretation of the types of discourse to which it conforms. Émile Benveniste, for example, perceives discourse as “language put into action, and necessarily between partners.”1 In its simplest sense, discourse is conversation or information.However,as suggested by Foucault,discourse can be defined as“the general domain of all statements,sometimes as an individualizable group of statements,and sometimes as a regulated practice that accounts for a number of statements.”2 It is through the regulating practices of discourse (through knowledge) that we become who we are,and it is through“discursive formations”that certain already established iden- 44 CHaPTer 2 tities or subjectivities are reinforced. It is precisely the “general domain of statements”regarding the life story of the female subject evident in the border autobiographies of Jovita González,Cleofas Jaramillo,Eva-Antonia Wilbur-Cruce,and Mary Helen Ponce that is of significance here. The autobiographer presents her life story, first of all,through narrative discourse that is produced by the act of telling within the text.Therefore, of key importance is the identification of specific references to symbolic spaces where development of the autobiographical subject takes place. Here it is important to recall Foucault’s assertion that discourse produces the subject.3 Barthes also notes that the subject can be defined as an “effect of language,”arguing that“all those outside power are obliged to steal language.”4 The MexicanAmerican women writers considered here, for example, represent the voice of the cultural “other” situated outside the realms of power,a subject whose roles have been culturally assigned to her. Indeed, the observations of Geneviève Fraisse in“A Philosophical History of Sexual Differences” points to the traditional role of women: “marital dependency and subordination to the preservation of the species .”5 That is,women have been confined to roles of obedient daughters, wives,and mothers.This assigning of roles corresponds to what Foucault has determined as discursive or“tactical elements or blocks operating in the field of force relations.”6 Of further importance,then,is the way each autobiographer uses language as a means of responding to these limits. With these ideas as background, the focus of this chapter involves an examination of the narrative and descriptive discourses evident in the texts of González, Jaramillo,Wilbur-Cruce, and Ponce, particularly in the way the autobiographical “I,” as a “subject-in-process,” presents her life course.7 I will be most interested in looking at the way the autobiographer expresses herself from an assumed or appropriated type of discourse that has to do with those“force relations”that have historically situated her in the traditional roles of daughter, wife, and mother within the space of the home where the male figure takes on a dominant position .8 The questions that guide my analysis are:What does each autobiographer choose to narrate? In what way has she chosen to narrate her life story? How does the female autobiographer represent herself within various segments and symbolic spaces of the narrative? What aspects of her world does she describe, and what is the purpose of choosing these aspects? Therefore, this chapter first highlights the use of narrative discourse and the way it reveals the development of the...

Share