Monday, January 18, 2016

Review of Poch@ Pop in Reflections Journal


Reflections Review Raises Important Issues about Decolonialism
In the current issue of Reflections: A Journal of Public Rhetorics, Civic Writing and Service Learning, Victor Del Hierro raises interesting questions about decolonialism, geo-politics, strategic essentialism and examining literacies beyond what is written. These questions remind me of the current issue of College English on translingualism in which Ellen Cushman emphasizes the decolonial potential of de-valuing English as the center of college writing while Suresh Canagarajah outlines a course for preparing graduate students to teach translingual students, and Keith Gilyard offers warnings about the potential for flattening linguistic difference, especially stripping the discrimination away from populations speaking particularly de-valued varieties of English. Because language is one of the main characteristics of what constructs the poch@ identity, I'm similarly interested in seeing how much the performance of linguistic difference will become a strategy employed by poch@s.


Del Hierro concludes his review:
The emphasis on Poch@ Pop artists’ abilities to operate within pop culture makes them important rhetoricians and communicators for Mexican Americans. Because of the myriad of experiences and political leanings within the community, the role of the Poch@ becomes vital towards creating a familiar ground for inter-generational belonging within and for Mexicans within the United States. (107)


Find the current issue of Reflections online, your subscribing university library, or through Interlibrary Loan (ILL): http://reflectionsjournal.net/purchase-articles/vol-15-2015/


No comments:

Post a Comment