In Search of the "Mexican Elvis": Border Matters, "Americanity," and Post-state-centric Thinking

How can we map the Americas in our age of globalization as a cohesive but complexly differentiated space? How can literary and cultural studies become less state-centric? John Rechy's The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez and the songs of the Mexican Elvis, El Vez, provide insight into these issues. The diverse cultural discourses signified upon in these works reflect the embeddedness of the subaltern subject in a variety of cultural discourses and material practices produced by the flows of global capital. They think beyond the state and thus suggest the need to re-imagine the borders of trans-American cultural studies.