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" Homelessness, Subjectivity and Nation-state in U.S. Central American Narratives "
Arango, Abel
Medina, Ruben
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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1105288
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| Doc. No
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TLpq2305847554
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| Main Entry
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Arango, Abel
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Medina, Ruben
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| Title & Author
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Homelessness, Subjectivity and Nation-state in U.S. Central American Narratives\ Arango, AbelMedina, Ruben
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| College
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The University of Wisconsin - Madison
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| Date
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2019
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| student score
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2019
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| Degree
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Ph.D.
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| Page No
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229
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| Abstract
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Images of dispossession and homelessness occupy a central place in a corpus of novels that span from the 1990s until today. Second-generation, Central American novelists linger on questions of displacement as the characters in their narratives repeatedly find themselves living without a permanent home or community. Together these works offer me a new way of understanding Central Americans’ liminality, given that they serve as a site that details the tensions around who is permitted to enter and occupy everyday living spaces, and by extension, the nation-state. Discouraged to settle in their countries of origin and denied citizenship in the U.S., Central American populations are de-legitimized and rendered stateless. Against these conditions, I advance the trope of homelessness as a counter-discourse that challenges an outdated nation-state system grounded in regimes of nationality and citizenship. The novels in this study have a subversive aim as they dismantle and generate alternative understandings of national belonging built upon the lines of territory, language (English only) and phenotype (White European). Instead I argue for a transnational approximation, suggesting that the nation-state is far from complete, given that the subjects of my study redraw territorial lines, frustrate fixed nationalities, develop new subjectivities and ultimately claim a sense of place.
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Ethnic studies
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Latin American literature
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Literature
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