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<i>La Llorona</i> Revisited: A Post-colonial Ecocritical Interpretation of Josephina López’s <i>Unconquered Spirits</i>

Article

Last updated: 24 Dec 2024

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Abstract

In the contexts of coloniality and post coloniality, the experience of indigenous people has been shaped by the exposure to the tools of control employed by the colonizers, such as enslavement, racial bias, and acculturation. In her play Unconquered Spirits (1995), Josephina López sheds light on this experience through presenting two stories that take place four centuries apart yet manifest similar experiences of exploitation, betrayal, and injustice, a structure which suggests the continuance of this legacy of oppression. In both stories, the playwright adapts the myth of La Llorona, introducing subversions and adding contexts not only to criticize the legacy of (post)coloniality but also to attack the traditional interpretation of the Mexican myth created by biased norms. The present research attempts to contribute to the criticism of the rewriting of La Llorona myth in Unconquered Spirits through presenting a postcolonial ecocritical reading of the play. Issues that are central to the postcolonial ecocritical approach to literature and at the core of the two stories the play dramatizes—such as entitlement, belonging, colonialist asset-stripping, and the place of the human in a post-human world—will be explored, linking the two heroines' impoverishment to the transformation of their native environments at the hands of coloniality. The analysis will be informed by postcolonial psychoanalytic theory, one of the theoretical paradigms that play a pivotal role in this rewriting.

DOI

10.21608/cse.2022.147944.1125

Keywords

Post-colonial ecocriticism, post-colonial psychology, myth adaptation, Josephina Lopez, <i>La Llorona</i>, Mexican folklore, (post)colonialism, Noble Savage, environment, Infanticide

Authors

First Name

Ingy

Last Name

Hassan

MiddleName

-

Affiliation

English Department, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University

Email

ingyhassan@yahoo.com

City

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Orcid

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Volume

2022

Article Issue

2

Related Issue

36309

Issue Date

2022-12-01

Receive Date

2022-06-29

Publish Date

2022-12-01

Page Start

4

Page End

18

Print ISSN

0575-1624

Online ISSN

2682-2504

Link

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/article_310517.html

Detail API

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/service?article_code=310517

Order

3

Type

Original Article

Type Code

738

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Cairo Studies in English

Publication Link

https://cse.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

<i>La Llorona</i> Revisited: A Post-colonial Ecocritical Interpretation of Josephina López’s <i>Unconquered Spirits</i>

Details

Type

Article

Created At

24 Dec 2024