A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala

Rating:
Summary: Indispensable
Review: Diane Nelson's extraordinary "ethnography of the state (3)" takes its title from a metaphor often used by Guatemalans to describe the indigenous cultural rights activism that has emerged in the wake of the Guatemalan war, a constant reminder to Guatemalans of the racial divisions that have structured national history and identity. A Finger in the Wound is an enormously rich and complex work, one that defies easy description or summation of its arguments. Nelson's stated aim is to examine the post-war emergence of Maya cultural activism; her integrative approach and subtle analysis, however, has produced a much more ambitious work. Through the prism of the state institutions, non-governmental organizations, cultural rights groups, popular culture, jokes (the appendix listing Rigoberta Menchú jokes is worth the price of the book alone), and global relations of production, Nelson examines the formation of Guatemala's racialized nationalism. Nelson's analysis deftly combines poststructural, gender, marxist, and psychoanalytic theory to argue for the articulated, relational nature of Ladino and Maya identity: "ethnic, gender, and nation-state identities are mutually constitutive, meaning that they do not exist outside their relation to each other, and at this historical moment the Guatemalan state is an important matrix through which these relations occur (7)." Unlike previous studies of Guatemala that dismiss the state as inherently illegitimate, Nelson takes the state seriously. Capacity to repress, while important, cannot alone explain its tenacity: "The state . . . is not a clear-cut set of interests that gets what it wants through repressive apparatuses. In Guatemala it has been and is still extraordinarily repressive-that is why there is so much attention to wounded bodies in this book. But it is also, and simultaneously, a set of relations: a structure of domination, yes, but one which in turns forms the conditions of possibility for all political work (28)." Nelson work demonstrates that these structures of domination often have unintended effects. One such effect is the space that has opened up in the wake of the war within state institutions for Maya activism. A Finger in the Wound examines the hostile reaction by many Ladinos, including Leftists, to this organizing. Nelson points out that while indigenous identity is an indispensable component of Guatemalan nationalism, Maya activists, by assuming what is considered a "western" lifestyle, threatens the binary assumptions -- particular/universal; past/future; female/male; etc. -- that underwrite racial, gender, and national identity. Importantly, Nelson's is the first study to examine critically the role gender ideologies and relations play in the development of the pan-Maya movement. Nelson admits to suffering from postmodern doubt: "In working on this book . . . I have found 'the people' to be rather more heterogeneous, 'the state' less clearly bounded . . . than I had acknowledged. As I became involved . . . in passionate internal divisions within the pueblo . . . as I witnessed the state becoming a site of struggle rather than an enemy to be smashed . . . I have had to confront the instability of my previous solid representations (46)." By not ignoring contradictions and ambiguities, Nelson reminds readers that the best way to understand the complexities of culture and history is through a dialectical approach. Aside from the force of its arguments, the relevance of A Finger in the Wound lies in its ability to situate an examination of unstable identities within a larger analysis of domination and rule, while simultaneously understanding how each informs and changes the other. This work represents the best of new cultural and social scholarship; it provides historians and anthropologists of Central America with an integrative theoretical framework for understanding the inseparable relationship between ethnic identity, capitalism, and state formation. --excerpt from forthcoming review in Hispanic American Historical Review

Rating:
Summary: invaluable
Review: In A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala, anthropologist Diane M. Nelson provides an analysis and ethnography of the Guatemalan State that is not only rich in its theoretical scope and in its empirical breadth, but that also brings to life the challenges of political struggle and everyday politics in Guatemala. This book contains information about Guatemalan political and government entities and events, such as the Academy of Mayan Languages, the ratification of ILO Convention 169, Guatemalan government actors and ministries, the Maya cultural rights movement, and the effects of the 36-year-long civil war, while simultaneously conveying incisive analysis of both actual actors in these struggles and the manner in which popular imagery, fantasies, fears, and stereotypes play into the struggles for self-representation of people in these different groups. While Nelson takes the Maya cultural rights movement and nation-state identity as her focus, because she focuses on the relations that constitute particular identities rather than on just the identities themselves, she provides an integrative analysis of how different identities-Maya, Ladino, gringo, "the State", "non-State actors", males and females, and others- constitute each other. The result is a book that offers insight not just into the Maya cultural rights movement in relation with the Guatemalan state and into the political context in the aftermath of the civil war, but also into how gender identities shape the roles and positions of women and men in relation with ethnic identities and the nationalist ladino discourse of the state. Using jokes, metaphor, and extensive ethnographic accounts from years of fieldwork, Nelson offers an analysis of Guatemala's recent political and social context, and the wider global context, that is both intellectually and politically provocative. She dares to make the connections that raise difficult questions; [i]f the subject of feminism, for example, does not exist as woman but is instead the effect of institutions and practices that produce the category of 'woman' (and then never as a fixed identity), then how does one fight women's oppression?" (71). Nelson explores such questions through developing the concept of fluidarity as " a practice of necessarily partial knowledge-in both the sense of taking the side of, and of being incomplete, vulnerable, and never completely fixed (Clifford 1986). This neologism plays with the idea of solidarity in an attempt to keep its vitally important transnational relations open and at the same time question its tendency toward rigidity, its reliance on solid, unchanging identifications, and its often unconscious hierarchizing (42) ". The concept of fluidarity challenges readers to place themselves in relation with Guatemala's political and social context by acknowledging that all identity is mutually constitutive and by making connections with the wider global and transnational context within which Guatemala is located. A Finger in the Wound suggests that it is the inherent instability of identity that makes apparently solid identities possible; "[i]t is precisely at the sites of struggle and of production-the state, the school, and the family-that identifications are both reiterated and appropriated . . . . Fluidarity looks to these spaces and relations, rather than to any solid identity positions, in order to discern and support democratizing work" (70). Fluidarity does not suggest that solid identity positions are not also vital to struggles for democracy, but rather that every solid identity is itself a relation, constituted through multiple identifications with others, and often able to change as these identifications and spaces change. Nelson is careful to point out that every group is heterogeneous and mutually self-constituting with multiple others. She reminds us that while the Maya Movement challenges the binary in which the Guatemalan state leans on indigenous culture in order to define itself as modern, literate, urban, the Maya Movement in turn leans on Mayan women; Mayan men's reluctance to support Mayan women's participation in the Maya cultural rights movement "suggests their dependence on the mujer maya as prosthetic, the need for her to act as a legitimizing link to the land, to the past, and to tradition" (275). Nelson also uses the metaphor of the body and prosthetics to talk about the productiveness of political and social struggles as always articulatory processes of identity production that make the structured relations between people with different historic investments open to transformation as these interactions also transform the people involved in struggle. In her discussion about the relation of struggles over identity with hegemonic attempts to create a national identity in Guatemala she tells the following joke: "[t]he calls for national unity over ethnic difference turn us to Benedict Anderson's 'imagined community', with 'a deep horizontal comradeship' (Anderson 1983, 16), [and] clear borders with unproblematized state sovereignty,' . . . (40). Perhaps we can imagine this ideal 'modern nation' as a piece of clothing meant to cover all its inhabitants. And thus the goal of Guatemala's national project would be to stitch together the various materials-Mayan, ladino, criollo, Garifuna, German, and Chinese-to form a suitable outfit that would clothe and protect the 'Guatemalan' as well as fashion (in the sense of define or represent) 'Guatemalan-ness.' If the clothes make the man, however, then this ideal nationalism may fit Guatemala like the camel hair suit of the joke: 'A man has a camel hair suit made for him but the next day goes back to the tailor and says, 'The sleeve's too short.' The tailor replies, 'You can't recut a camel hair suit, but just hold your arm like this [over-extended] and no one will notice.' The man goes out with his arm like that, but the next day returns to say the right leg is too long. The tailor tells him to hold his leg like this [bent up] and no one will notice. Well, this goes on until the guy is walking around with his limbs every which way. A couple see him, and the woman exclaims, 'Look at the poor deformed man!' And her husband says, 'Yeah, but doesn't his camel hair suit fit great!'" (Nelson 1999: 178-179). Nelson uses this joke to comment on the disjuncture between the warm comfort and promise of pleasure offered by an ideal of a national identity that can resolve the deep wounds of centuries of violent colonization, of highly unequal economic relations and of the recent civil war, and the fact that the only way such a "suit" of national identity could fit is through painful contortions that these different wounded subjects are pushed to make to fit such a suit. But, as Nelson suggests throughout the book, the "camel suit of national identity" can itself be thought to consist of the interactions between the different subjects-body parts-of Guatemala's body politic. While nationalist ladino discourse may attempt to pressure the different constituencies and their antagonisms to fit into a national united identity, similar to how the Maya cultural rights movement may pressure Mayan women to fit into a homogenous and united political Mayan identity, instead of these different people-Mayans as well as ladinos, gringos, and others- only getting pressured and constricted by this suit of collective identity, they are also using it in ways that transform the suit; they are not just getting shaped by its attempts to mold them into an uncomfortable fit with the rest of the nation, but are actively shaping "the suit" through using the different spaces and mechanisms opened up in this discourse to fight for self-definition and representation. This book is an invaluable tool not just for people who are interested in Guatemala, but also for anyone interested in the subjects of identity politics, nation-state formation, the relations between ethnicity and gender, for political activists who are concerned with the difficult contradictions and challenges of social struggle, and for any student of anthropology.

Rating:
Summary: A feminist and postmodern perspective
Review: The book is tight, however, it is an overwhelming barage of self-interest and personal agrandizment within the discipline. In contrast to other ethonographies, Fingure is more of a venue ethnography; Nelson uses the book to further her own persona, beliefs and character in the true postmodern spirit. Between the brash jokes (although they relflect reality) and impressive vocabulary emerges a theme of ethnographer as "superwoman". This theme made me wonder if Nelson was being extreme with intent to show me that she could transcend ideological gender boundaries that exist within anthropology. Although Nelson effectively provides deep insight into Guatemala and indigenous affairs there, she interjected to much "I" into the work. Those looking for a postmodernist view of Guatemalan idigenous affairs would enjoy this book. Those searching for an objective view should refer to another piece.

Rating:
Summary: A feminist and postmodern perspective
Review: The book is tight, however, it is an overwhelming barage of self-interest and personal agrandizment within the discipline. In contrast to other ethonographies, Fingure is more of a venue ethnography; Nelson uses the book to further her own persona, beliefs and character in the true postmodern spirit. Between the brash jokes (although they relflect reality) and impressive vocabulary emerges a theme of ethnographer as "superwoman". This theme made me wonder if Nelson was being extreme with intent to show me that she could transcend ideological gender boundaries that exist within anthropology. Although Nelson effectively provides deep insight into Guatemala and indigenous affairs there, she interjected to much "I" into the work. Those looking for a postmodernist view of Guatemalan idigenous affairs would enjoy this book. Those searching for an objective view should refer to another piece.