Papers by Ricardo L . Ortiz
South Atlantic Review, 2022
paper Title: '(Inter-)Disciplinarity’s (Dis-)Contents:
Tarrying with the “Post-Normative,” Linger... more paper Title: '(Inter-)Disciplinarity’s (Dis-)Contents:
Tarrying with the “Post-Normative,” Lingering with the “Post-Ethnic” at the Aporetic Intersections of Queer Latinx Studies’ Undecidable Now.'
South Atlantic Review, 2022
Latinx Talk, 2022
which deepen the critical response rst sparked in April and May of 2018, and both making ample re... more which deepen the critical response rst sparked in April and May of 2018, and both making ample reference to all the online conversations under discussion here. While both Gil'Adi and McHugh-Dillon cover the controversy in great detail as the public and media event it initially was, both also write from an explicitly literary studies disciplinary perspective that leads them to pose compelling questions: for McHugh, about the complex genre-performativity of the confessional essay when it's deployed (like Díaz's is) in part as an act of self-exoneration as much as anything else; and, for Gil'Adi, about the Re ection of Boyle Height's
Latinx Literature Now, 2019
“Archive and Diaspora” turns to work in the philosophy of history by Hayden White to underwrite a... more “Archive and Diaspora” turns to work in the philosophy of history by Hayden White to underwrite a reading of the novelist, poet, and essayist Julia Alvarez that argues for her literary work’s positive contributions to an unfolding readerly sense of Dominican, Caribbean, and Latinx-diasporic history. The section devotes serious attention to two of Alvarez’s major works of historical fiction, the novels In the Time of the Butterflies and In the Name of Salome, focusing on each text’s distinct approach to deploying the resources of literature to do the work of history.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, 2019
Latinx literature’s historical interest in the cultural, social, and political dynamics of gender... more Latinx literature’s historical interest in the cultural, social, and political dynamics of gender plays as central a role in its long and varied discursive tradition as any other major thematic concern. Since the 19th century, representations of life in Latinx communities inhabiting what increasingly became the territory of the United States put the forces and conflicts of culturally based gender differences center stage, whether those differences came from within a culture, whose values shifted when it moved to a new geographic setting, or from without, when a culture confronted the differing values of an often dominant, oppressive other. Latinx literature is too vast and varied to accommodate a comprehensive account of these shifts and currents. But one can see a steady move away from the rigid binary logic of gender difference inherited from the traditional cis-hetero-patriarchal mindset of colonial Spanish-Catholic rule, a mindset that, historically, overwhelmed whatever more fl...
Latinx Literature Now, 2019
Using work published over the first decade of the twenty-first century by scholars John Beverley ... more Using work published over the first decade of the twenty-first century by scholars John Beverley and Cristina Beltran, “The Trouble(s) with Unity” opens the larger discussion by accounting for US latinidad as a demographic, historical, political, and cultural formation, one better characterized by fluidity, heterogeneity, unevenness, and nonidentity than by any more conventional, categorical, essentialist or in any other way fixed identitarian logics.
Introduction -- 1. The Trouble(s) With Unity -- 2. Reiterating Performatives -- 3. Archive and Di... more Introduction -- 1. The Trouble(s) With Unity -- 2. Reiterating Performatives -- 3. Archive and Diaspora -- 4. Against Against Literature -- 5. The Testimonial Imagination -- 6. Un-Homey States -- 7. (Latinx) Literature’s Work.
“Reiterating Performatives” turns to theoretical work by Jacques Derrida and critical work by Edw... more “Reiterating Performatives” turns to theoretical work by Jacques Derrida and critical work by Edwidge Danticat to fashion a more capacious, inclusive theory of the writer, and of writing, than those usually understood to have been offered historically by either traditional literary criticism or the strains of post-structural theory that have put that criticism under such acute interrogation over the past fifty years. Without losing sight of the question of latinidad introduced in the previous section, this section focuses primarily on the question of the literary through its analysis of the figure and the work of the writer.
This section combines several threads of discussion from previous sections, including bringing Al... more This section combines several threads of discussion from previous sections, including bringing Alvarez more directly into conversation with Danticat, introducing work in the philosophy of history by Michel-Rolphe Touillot to deepen the earlier analysis of Hayden White, and returning to John Beverley’s work on literature, testimonio, and cultural studies, to describe literature’s, and literary studies’, historical resilience in the face of especially Beverley’s important critiques from the nineteen nineties. The section concludes by turning briefly to Alvarez’s novel Salome and Danticat’s literary memoir Brother, I’m Dying, in order to describe how each text deploys literary resources to cut across and even to merge the mimetic registers of fiction and history.
J Homosexual, 1993
... of a politically informed semiotic reading of Chi-cano/a texts complementary to the Jamesonia... more ... of a politically informed semiotic reading of Chi-cano/a texts complementary to the Jamesonian model proposed by Ramon Saldivar in Chicano ... Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemp-hill's film, Tongues Untied, which should leave us asking what precisely shocked Jesse Helms and ...
Theatre Journal, 2000
Beginning in 1998, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has sponsored programmin... more Beginning in 1998, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History has sponsored programming under the title Encuentros: Latino America at the Smithsonian. As part of its 1999–2000 programming year, and in conjunction with Hispanic Heritage Month, the Smithsonian brought a traveling company performing Alfredo Ramos’s 1993 play, The Last Angry Brown Hat, to the DC area for a weekend of shows at various venues. While Ramos’s play explores Chicano history and culture, the provocative, ambitious plot line of gay Nuyorican playwright Edwin Sánchez’s 1995 play, Clean, poses challenges to actors and audience alike. The play made its (and its author’s) auspicious DC debut run at the Studio Theatre’s Secondstage in April of 1999. The two plays explore contemporary issues, though their points of focus differ significantly.
Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 1993
Page 1. SEL 33 (1993) ISSN 0039-3657 Fielding's "Orientalist" Moment: Historical F... more Page 1. SEL 33 (1993) ISSN 0039-3657 Fielding's "Orientalist" Moment: Historical Fiction and Historical Knowledge in Tom Jones RICARDO L. ORTIZ The Gypsy Episode in Fielding's TomJones1 negotiates between competing ...
Journal of Homosexuality, 1993
... of a politically informed semiotic reading of Chi-cano/a texts complementary to the Jamesonia... more ... of a politically informed semiotic reading of Chi-cano/a texts complementary to the Jamesonian model proposed by Ramon Saldivar in Chicano ... Marlon Riggs and Essex Hemp-hill's film, Tongues Untied, which should leave us asking what precisely shocked Jesse Helms and ...
Social Text, 1999
... Brad Epps, "Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel ... In &a... more ... Brad Epps, "Proper Conduct: Reinaldo Arenas, Fidel ... In "The School of Caliban," the concluding section of his important his-torical and genealogical study of the literature of "all" the Americas, Jose David Saldivar has occasion to quote a familiar argument of Fredric Jame-son's ...
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Papers by Ricardo L . Ortiz
Tarrying with the “Post-Normative,” Lingering with the “Post-Ethnic” at the Aporetic Intersections of Queer Latinx Studies’ Undecidable Now.'
Tarrying with the “Post-Normative,” Lingering with the “Post-Ethnic” at the Aporetic Intersections of Queer Latinx Studies’ Undecidable Now.'