La urbanización de la conciencia chicana

Abstract

This dissertation examines the works of four Chicana/o writers who write about Los Angeles, California urban spaces, and how the literary protagonist experiences the material realities of everyday life. The objective of this dissertation is to look at the mechanisms used by the narrator and the meaning they transmit through the description of urban space. David Harvey's theory on the Urbanization of Consciousness is used to analyze the spatial transformation taking place in Los Angeles from the 1960's to the 1980's. Moreover, I utilize Michael de Certeau's explanations of how the practices of everyday life influence the author's cartographic imaginary. These practices are manifested in the narrator's description of the physical and social space and they convey an ideological message that points to the process of urbanization of consciousness in a capitalist society. Additionally, it draws together the work of important theorists such as Henri Lefebvre, Rodolfo Acuña, Mario Barrera, and James Diego Vigil. Chapter one introduces the theoretical framework that is used throughout this study. It establishes a definition of the urbanization of consciousness and how the main characters' interact with money, family, community, class, and the State. Chapter two explains how the rapid urban development in East Los Angeles during the 1960's shaped the characters' upbringings in the novel Their Dogs Came With Them (2007) by Helena María Viramontes. Chapter three analyzes how urban space molds the consciousness of the individual in Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (1993) by Luis J. Rodríguez. Chapter four examines the architectural imagination in the novel of Alejandro Morales' Caras viejas y vino nuevo (1975). Chapter five studies the urbanization of gang violence among Chicana/o youth in the work of Yxta Maya Murray, Locas (1997). My investigation leads me to conclude that the Chicana/o community became urbanized when its members began to mirror its fragmented environment and when they began to see themselves as wage workers.