Affective communities and millennial desires: Latinx, or why my computer won’t recognize Latina/o

Abstract

There is a tremendous shift in public digital discourse and the academy more broadly, about the use of Latinx, one that may appear, on the surface, as an uncritical, hip way to shift how we talk about ourselves. While there is a long history of contestation about these categories of naming, my goal in this essay is to chart out the histories of how we went from using Mexican American and Puerto Rican to Chicano and Nuyorican and then the latest iterations, like Latina/o and eventually Latinx. By drawing on specific case studies of millennial digital cultures and the creation of new-phase ethnic studies departments in the 2000s, I demonstrate how millennials use Latinx to transcend gender, racial, class, and regional constraints they see emanating from boomer-generation ethno-nationalist formations. To be a part of the affective community represents a core value for millennials because it is antiessentialist because Latinx bears the load of recognition and diversity and represents the power of inclusion without speaking for everyone. Ultimately, Latinx can carry the excessive and diverse affective load of a population in ways that other ethno-nationalist and pan-Latina/o terms cannot.

The Complexity of the “x” in Latinx: How Latinx/a/o Students Relate to, Identify With, and Understand the Term Latinx

“…While there was no consistency when the term Latinx was first used, the examination of scholarship conveys that the “x” was first introduced in a Puerto Rican psychological periodical to challenge the gender binaries encoded in the Spanish language (Logue, 2015). In the published literature about the term Latinx , scholars have stated that the “x” was first used at the front of Chicano written in the form of “Xicano” as part of the civil rights movement for the empowerment of Mexican origin people in the United States (Guidotti-Hernández, 2017; Milian, 2017), while other scholars in the field of linguistic anthropology and archeology have made the argument that Chicano was changed to Xicano to emphasize how the letter X and the word origins are related to the Nahuatl language and to peoples of Mexican descent (Pharao Hansen & Tlapoyawa, 2018). The first noticeable usage of the term Latinx was at a university with the purpose to be more reflective of a gender-inclusive student organization (Armus, 2015).…”

“…The “x” also confronts the namelessness violence of colonization, slavery, and systematic marginalization of Indigenous peoples throughout the American continent (Engel, 2017; Milian, 2017; Santos, 2017). Guidotti-Hernández (2017) noted that the “x” marks the Indigenous mythical homeland of Aztlán in the United States Southwest, including “claims to land during the Mexican period, even though those lands were occupied by native peoples before the Spanish arrived and established the colonial empire that would eventually produce the Mexican nation-state” (p. 142). Rossini (2018) asserted that using the term Latinx can be perceived as providing visibility to Indigenous communities.…”

“…Trujillo-Pagán (2018) discussed that the term Latinx is pronounced in Spanish as “La-ten-ex, La-teen-ex, La-tinks, or even Latin-equis” (p. 396). Guidotti-Hernández (2017) asserted that Latinx is pronounced in Spanish as “Lat-een-ecks” (p. 147), while Galvan (2017), asked “What does LatinKs mean?” (p. 187). Adding to the confusion of the term, some scholars have argued that the term “Latinx is virtually unpronounceable in Spanish” (Engel, 2017, p. 198).…”

Latinx: Inclusive language as liberation praxis.

“…Several factors contribute to resistance to the use of the term Latinx . As described by Guidotti-Hernández (2017), the term Latinx defies Spanish language norms for how gender is expressed and understood, and in doing so, also challenges nationalistic articulations of identity. Gómez-Barris and Fiol-Matta (2014) also captured the complexity of the “unknown” when it comes to understanding resistance to the use of Latinx , noting how the “x” moves away from the dichotomous/binary and instead toward “vectors of multi-intentionality,” which is unchartered territory.…”

Global Latin(X) AmericanXs: Charting new ontological and epistemological cartographies beyond US LatinX studies

“… 3. In keeping with the disruptive, critical logic of this special issue, I use the various terms Latina/o/@/x as provocations for analysis. Furthermore, my use of the neologism “LatinX” follows the arguments in Guidotti-Hernández (2017). …”