Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala

Diane M. Nelson

Published by University of California Press 1999

Finger in the Wound

Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala

Diane M. Nelson
Edited by: Diane M. Nelson

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520920606

Overview
Contents

About this book

Many Guatemalans speak of Mayan indigenous organizing as "a finger in the wound." Diane Nelson explores the implications of this painfully graphic metaphor in her far-reaching study of the civil war and its aftermath. Why use a body metaphor? What body is wounded, and how does it react to apparent further torture? If this is the condition of the body politic, how do human bodies relate to it—those literally wounded in thirty-five years of war and those locked in the equivocal embrace of sexual conquest, domestic labor, mestizaje, and social change movements?

Supported by three and a half years of fieldwork since 1985, Nelson addresses these questions—along with the jokes, ambivalences, and structures of desire that surround them—in both concrete and theoretical terms. She explores the relations among Mayan cultural rights activists, ladino (nonindigenous) Guatemalans, the state as a site of struggle, and transnational forces including Nobel Peace Prizes, UN Conventions, neo-liberal economics, global TV, and gringo anthropologists. Along with indigenous claims and their effect on current attempts at reconstituting civilian authority after decades of military rule, Nelson investigates the notion of Quincentennial Guatemala, which has given focus to the overarching question of Mayan—and Guatemalan—identity. Her work draws from political economy, cultural studies, and psychoanalysis, and has special relevance to ongoing discussions of power, hegemony, and the production of subject positions, as well as gender issues and histories of violence as they relate to postcolonial nation-state formation.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
List of Abbreviations Publicly Available Download PDF	xvii
1. Introduction: Body Politics and Quincentennial Guatemala Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Gringa Positioning, Vulnerable Bodies, and Fluidarity: A Partial Relation Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	41
3. State Fetishism and the Piñata Effect: Catastrophe and the Magic of Culture Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
4. Hostile Markings Taken for Identity: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority in a Graveyard inside Guatemala, October 1992 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
5. Gendering the Ethnic-National Question: Rigoberta Menchú Jokes and the Out-Skirts of Fashioning Identity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	170
6. Bodies That Splatter: Gender, “Race,” and the Discourses of Mestizaje Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	206
7. Maya-Hackers and the Cyberspatialized Nation-State: Modernity, Ethnostalgia, and a Lizard Queen in Guatemala Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	245
8. A Transnational Frame-Up: ILO Convention 169, Identity, Territory, and the Law Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
9. Global Biopolitical Economy: Prosthetics and Blood Politics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	348
Appendix. Selected Rigoberta Menchú Jokes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	373
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	379
Works Cited Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	383
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	407

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: University of California Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 448
Illustrations
- Other: 21 black-and-white illustrations and 2 maps
Keywords: Social Science; Cultural & Social; Anthropology

eBook

Published: August 31, 1999
ISBN: 9780520920606

Paperback

Planned Publication: August 31, 1999
ISBN: 9780520212855