Although recent criticism, focused on issues of resistance and border writing, holds that Chicano/a representations of self and community unsettle and transform hegemonic ideology, it has not fully explained that deconstructive potential. Tolerating Ambiguity argues that the symbolic force of Chicano/a writing is an attribute of ethnic writing which, as a symptom or reminder of the repressed ethnicity of the national consciousness, disturbs the latter. Drawing on different genres, this study analyzes how Chicano/a writing, symptomatic of a repressed prenational identity, resists the binary symbolic order of the national consciousness to yield representations of communities characterized by a resistance to closure and homogeneity and by an accommodation of differences.
"Wilson Neate's trailblazing study charts a new course for Chicano/a literary criticism. 'Tolerating Ambiguity: Ethnicity and Community in Chicano/a Writing' offers an innovative approach to Chicano/a texts that foregrounds the complex relationship of this literature to U.S. national identity. Neate's carefully constructed theoretical framework, a convincing fusion of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and cultural criticism, provides fresh, insightful readings of a variety of Chicano/a works. Boldly highlighting the diversity of Chicano/a writing, 'Tolerating Ambiguity' is essential reading for serious scholars of Chicano/a literature." (Karen Christian, University of Maryland)







