From Counter to Hegemonic: Re-Mapping Ideology in Latina/o Life Writing from the War on Terror

This essay maps how life writing by Latin American immigrant and US born or raised Latina/o soldiers in the War on Terror illuminates the troubling ideological contours of an ongoing subaltern move from the margins to the center. Latin American and Latina/o Studies continue to be animated by contestatory claims to subaltern, oppositional, and counterhegmonic status predicated on such life writing genres as testimonio. By analyzing a new wave of life writing war genres that illustrate varied Latin American-cum-Latina/ocum-G.I. performances of hegemonic power, this essay seeks to de-center contemporary discourses about the purportedly inherent oppositional nature of Latina/o life writing, and to call for new paradigms in Latin American and Latina/o Studies.