ABSTRACT
In this essay, the author surveys the strategies of identification and subject formation in Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. How do Latino/a subjects rehearse and articulate a (raced) self? How do the notions of domesticity and barrio context inform the construction of identity? What are the limits on the self to represent the group? Through a series of close readings of Cisneros’s text, the author examines specifically the implications of psychoanalytic critique for Latino subjectivity and/in literature. In particular, Sifuentes-J?uregui states that subject formation in Cisneros should be related to Lacan’s mirror stage and to Fanon’s critical rereading of the Lacanian concept in Black Skin, White Masks. Sifuentes-J?uregui proposes that the self emerges not as Subject or as Object but as the Abject, which is here used as a noun, not an adjective. Specifically, Sifuentes-J?uregui analyzes how Esperanza’s abjected body is deployed and recycled in an effort to “recover” a sense of identity. Since much of Latino/a (and other minority) literature has worked to rally a sense of community around itself, the author discusses the role of identification in the act of reading Latino/a narratives. Finally, he takes into account what Latino/a texts bring to psychoanalysis in the way of new conceptualizations of the self.
