Cecile Pineda: The Undisciplined Subject

John Waldron examines Pineda’s work as an undisciplined challenge to us as readers. Rather than telling stories about herself and her family of immigrants who came to the U.S. to avoid the ravages of the Mexican Revolution,... [ view full abstract ]

John Waldron examines Pineda’s work as an undisciplined challenge to us as readers. Rather than telling stories about herself and her family of immigrants who came to the U.S. to avoid the ravages of the Mexican Revolution, Pineda forces us to inhabit the thoughts and see the world through the perspectives of subjects who undergo radical transformations (Face, Fishlight or Bardo 99) or who confront shattering realities (Bardo 99, Redoubt, Frieze). Pineda’s work asks not that we locate her work using signs of her disciplinary difference, but rather that we identify with the lack at the core of her characters’ and our own being. The result is that the disciplinary structures used to domesticate the untamable are revealed to be incomplete and unfinished, and Pineda allows us to imagine new, more malleable constructs that allow for the recognition and inclusion of true, undisciplined difference.

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