UC Irvine

Developing insights from decolonial theory, trauma theory, and critical pedagogy, my project offers a historical genealogy of the rhetoric of the body by focusing on the phenomenon of wounds and the condition of semi-ness. I link late-medieval and Early Modern female Iberian Christian devotional rhetorics to a larger exploration of self-representation of fragmented bodies in contemporary Chicana textual, cultural, and visual rhetorics. More exactly, I examine an Iberian and Ibero-American rhetorical strategy of entering the wound in representations of the Virgin Mary’s abstracted body and its impact on Ibero-American female perceptions of body and identity. I trace connections between this Iberian genealogy and Mesoamerican concepts of securing stability during metaphorical earthquakes of lived turmoil and sacrifice as these connections interweave in the construction of Chicana rhetorics of woundedness. I propose that a ubiquitous form of Chicana self-representation strategies, notably manifested in later-twentieth-century Californian print media and art, positions wounds and fragments in such a way as to generatively confront and transform the self. To conclude, I consider feelings of academic woundedness in Californian Chicana students and tactics whereby university composition instructors might stimulate more inclusive classrooms.