Envisioning a Decolonial Future: The Poetics of Presentism and Chicana Literature

This book arises with the purpose of linking presenteeism to decolonizing projects within Chicano feminist theory, such as the one exposed by historian Emma Pérez in The Decolonial Imaginary (1999), which encourages the revision of the role of women in history through a cultural and historical imaginary free of domination patterns. Therefore, it is proposed that presenteeism is a viable interpretive tool in such decolonization attempts made in the field of literature. For this, it is first necessary to dissociate this concept from the cultural materialism from which it undoubtedly derives and link it with theories related to aesthetics and reception, to which the first part of this work will be devoted. Subsequently, an analysis of presenteeism will be carried out in two works of the Chicano feminist corpus where a clear attempt to decolonize the historical and sexual imaginary is appreciated: Sor Juana's Second Dream (1999), by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and Their Dogs Came with Them ( 2007), by Helena María Viramontes.