Race,Coloniality, and Geo-Body Politics: The Garden as Latin@ Vernacular Discourse

This essay focuses critical attention on one way that The Garden (2008) functions as a Latin@ vernacular discourse that serves to articulate the South Central Farmers to a decolonial politics operating through a kind of “border thinking.” Delinking themselves from the modern-colonial imaginary, I argue, the South Central Farmers enact a geo-body politics of knowledge that is consistently subverted, even by supporters, vis-à-vis modern-colonial rationality. Despite their apparent instrumental failure, the South Central Farmers succeeded in enacting a decolonial challenge, which compels us as scholars to rethink our approach to the Farmers’ specific activism and Latin@ vernacular discourse generally.