A Finger in the Wound

Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala

Author: Diane M. Nelson
ISBN: 9780520212855

Many Guatemalans speak of Mayan indigenous organizing as "a finger in the wound." Diane Nelson explores the implications of this painfully graphic metaphor in her far-reaching study of the civil war and its aftermath. Why use a body metaphor? What body is wounded, and how does it react to apparent further torture? If this is the condition of the body politic, how do human bodies relate to it—those literally wounded in thirty-five years of war and those locked in the equivocal embrace of sexual conquest, domestic labor, mestizaje, and social change movements?Supported by three and a half years of fieldwork since 1985, Nelson addresses these questions—along with the jokes, ambivalences, and structures of desire that surround them—in both concrete and theoretical terms. She explores the relations among Mayan cultural rights activists, ladino (nonindigenous) Guatemalans, the state as a site of struggle, and transnational forces including Nobel Peace Prizes, UN Conventions, neo-libera

Publisher: University of California Press
Publish Date: 1999-04-01

Subjects: Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Cross-Cultural Center (Location: Central & South America (CSAM))