Maybe a Colony: And Still Another Critique of the Comp Community.
1997; University of Pittsburgh Press; Volume: 17; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0731-6755
Autores Tópico(s)Australian History and Society
ResumoYou see, my ancestry is Puerto Rican. And so, even as I remain a stranger to the Island, really, even as I work at regaining the Spanish of my youngest years, try to learn, as I near the age of fifty, the ways of literate Spanish, I am a Puerto Rican. So I try to think about the things written about dependency theory and world systems theory, theories that attempt to explain how cores, the centers like the U.S., affect the peripheries, what an older modernization theory called the Third World. I can't pretend to have yet gotten beyond the surface of world systems theory, a field of sociology, but I can't help but think that it is tied to rhetoric and that it is tied to what we do in composition classrooms. I think about Puerto Rico and a sensibility that says we are finally in a postcolonial era. Then I discover that in 1991 the plebiscite process that colonies undergo to decide their fates?independence, statehood, continued common wealth status?failed to pass through Congress. Congress decided. In 1993 President Clinton decided not to allow Puerto Rico to keep the proviso that allowed major industries who located on the island a tax exemption. In effect, President Clinton decided how much profit Puerto Rico would make, Clinton having made a promise to keep pharmaceutical costs down, the Island's major industry, and Clinton's having made a promise to keep industry home (Bayer 128-31,91). And it becomes clear to me that Puerto Rico, whatever its official status, is the contemporary version of a colony?dependent on U.S. imports and living at below subsistence with its exports. And then thoughts about the U.S. military in Puerto Rico. And mandatory English and English literature instruc tion. And folks like me, Puerto Ricans and Not. Americans, but we say Americans of Color, and others say minorities. And I think about how we can make multiculturalism work when there is no equity in large systemic terms that show up even in individuals. So here's what I want to lay out?a problem for which I don't have a solution. When we demand a certain language, a certain dialect, and a certain rhetorical manner in using that dialect and language, we seem to be working counter to the cultural multiplicity we seek. And I think that means that we will have to rethink the whole thing. The demand for linguistic and rhetorical compliance still smacks of colonialism, practices which reproduce, in effect, the colonial
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