Affective Chambers: Repurposing Feeling in Oscar Zeta Acosta's The Revolt of the Cockroach People

Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Revolt of the Cockroach People, a semi-fictionalized account of late 1960’s East L.A. Chicano activism, nonetheless reads in many ways as a courtroom drama. Critical interventions into the novel... [ view full abstract ]

Oscar Zeta Acosta’s The Revolt of the Cockroach People, a semi-fictionalized account of late 1960’s East L.A. Chicano activism, nonetheless reads in many ways as a courtroom drama. Critical interventions into the novel have rightfully commented on its seemingly ambivalent stance towards the political tensions so often characteristic of Chicano Literature: assimilation, reformism, or revolution. Regarding protagonist Zeta Brown’s eccentric courtroom performances, critic Marcial González even asserts that “rather than trying to prove the innocence or guilt of his clients…he endeavors to expose the inherent class bias of the courts and the LAPD” (91). González thus affirms Brown’s disbelief in the viability of the legal system to effect change. Yet, Brown’s delicate ability to straddle the line between contempt of court and his own political motivations demonstrates a politics less concerned with destroying the court apparatus—rather, he repurposes the courtroom as a chamber for affective political intensity.

My paper will suggest that Revolt provides a model for “rewiring” repressive institutions. Indeed, Brown uses his voice in court less to adhere to legal procedures than to unravel courtroom order and commune with fellow Chicano militants in the audience. During a teary-eyed account of the conquest of the Aztecs, for example, Zeta Brown elicits a two-minute standing ovation from the crowd. Though it’s questionable whether his opportunistic narrative has a positive effect on the trial’s outcome, it emboldens the surrounding political collective. So despite the fact that Zeta Brown, at times, calls for the complete destruction of the legal system, he nonetheless tactically uses the court’s sense of self-civility in order to dislodge institutional protocols, and kindle intensity capable of new forms of being and emancipation