Abstract
One of the greatest problems faced in countries under colonial structures is the difficulty of self-representation, of creating their own narratives. In Puerto Rico, for a long time, the response to the double colonization (first by the Spanish and then by the Americans) has been approached through literature. This fact is easily identifiable in the vast production of works that attempt to systematize an idea of Puertoricanness. Thus, the aim of this paper is to analyze how this problematic resurfaces in donde (2005), a book by Eduardo Lalo (1964), who reflects on an idea of Puerto Rican identity that goes against the grain and is alien to nationalist essentialisms and homogenizing tendencies about the Caribbean, proposing new categories to think and, above all, to reinterpret Caribbean culture through notions such as “scratched writing”; and also by questioning inherited narratives about the idea of homeland, provenance, tradition. For this purpose, the theoretical premises of Stuart Hall, Jacques Derrida, Gina Saraceni, Juan Duschesne-Winter, will assist us in the reflection.
Keywords:
identity; donde; Eduardo Lalo; Puerto Rico; colonial system