Denise Meda-Lambru

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Unique Response to Death:Day of the Dead Fiestas and Communal Articulations of ResistanceDenise Meda-LambruIntroductionPhilosophers such as Octavio Paz and Emilio Uranga theorize death grounded in Mexican circumstances to show an intimate relational dynamic with life. In their view, death is embedded in the everydayness of the living. Carlos A. Sánchez, in "Death and the Colonial Difference," explains that the Mexican idea of death reveals much about the life and the situatedness of those who subscribe to the relational dynamic between life and death. Death is linked to the living, especially for those who are situated in inferiorized positions. In the accounts promoted by Paz and by Uranga, the historical and social conditions of lived experience provide the context for how death is conceived, and, subsequently, treated. They advance Mexican conceptions of death and provide interesting perspectives into how some colonized peoples are resisting narrow narratives of death. This is to say that their approaches do not grant the dominant assumption that death is merely a biological event or a life event ceasing the life of the individual. In this essay, I examine their critiques of dominant assumptions of death to elaborate on conceptions of death contextualized within historical and social entanglements, namely, a Mexican analysis of death. In particular, I utilize Paz's work on Day of the Dead fiestas to study communal practices and theorize the ritual dimensions of the life and death relationship. Through an examination of a Mexican approach to death, I contend that rituals of death help locate the non-dominant social logics that engender resistant activity and cultivate a distinct interconnected communal relation.To develop this position, I clarify the historical and social distinctions between Mexican and Anglo-American approaches to death and analyze literature promoting a Mexican view of death. Ultimately, I share a similar view [End Page 31] with Paz, Uranga, and Sánchez who charge that there is a unique Mexican idea of death. However, to be clear, my interest in their work does not assume they represent the Mexican view of death (Brandes, Skulls to the Living). Rather, I am interested in exploring how their discussions of death, from a particular socio-historical situation, reveal ways in which colonized peoples refuse dichotomous narratives of death. Sánchez's work, in particular, provides valuable insights into the Mexican relation with death, particularly the role of coloniality/modernity with temporality. Lastly, as I return to Paz's own discussion of death, I refer to the sensibilities and practices relevant to the resistant dimensions of a Mexican relationship with death. An analysis of Paz's focus on fiestas offers a focus distinct from Sánchez in that it pays significant attention to the ritual dimensions of death and helps illustrate the resistant responses to hegemonic social norms. Thus, paying attention to communal practices, this essay emphasizes the relationship between death rituals and deviant activity to dominant modes of being.What Is Death? Examining the DistinctionsScholars have noted a distinction between the logics involved in European and Anglo-American approaches to death and those of Mexican people. Emilio Uranga asserts that "[f]or the North American (el norteamericano), death is a reality that must be hidden, a phenomenon that is silenced and masked as much as possible so that it will not disturb, with its impertinence, the flow of a life that unfolds in radical dedication to [self]-realization and work" (qtd. in Sánchez 180). Paz shares a similar view of this concealment. He writes that "the word death is not pronounced in New York, in Paris, in London, because it burns the lips" ("Day of the Dead" 57). Paz describes death for the Euro-Anglo as one that is treated as a stinging topic to be avoided. In both Uranga's view and Paz's view, the Euro-Anglo phenomenon of death is not socially discussed or regarded as part of the daily lived realities of the subject. If we take their accounts as at least generally accurate, then for Anglos, death is something that is to be treated as separate from life.1In distinction, however, the Mexican attitude toward death is described as...

_Many scholars argue that the spiritual dimensions of aesthetic practices and resistance have been undertheorized or omitted. This paper examines aesthetic processes taken up by Amelia Mesa-Bains (1994, 1999) and Gloria Anzaldúa (1987, 2015) to theorize how some Chicanx artists employ an aesthetic based on spirituality as relational, memorial, and material practice to critique colonial ideologies embedded in dichotomies such as man/woman, subject/object, fine/folk art, and individual/community. By focusing on Mesa-Bains’ altar installations and Anzaldúa’s writing process, I draw out how social relations and memory work operate to interpret the relationship between aesthetics and spirituality. I argue that the relational dynamic of their aesthetic sensibilities and techniques show ways some Chicanx scholars and artists subscribe to a sense of spirituality that maintains interconnected relations with others who have been disempowered and marginalized._ _ __To support this position, in the first half of the paper, I analyze the relational sensibilities central to_ _Chicanx aesthetic sensibility of _rasquache domesticana,_ which highlights the concrete spaces in which Chicanx, their aesthetic perception, and techniques generate a communal resistance that is sustained through spirituality. The second half turns to Mesa-Bains’ altar installation for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1994) and Anzaldúa’s writing process described in Borderlands (1987) to clarify ways in which aesthetics and spiritual relations engender practices of resistance to social dichotomies. _.