"Drawing on the Athenian tradition of 'wielding citizenship as a weapon
to defend a contingently defined polis, ' Hector Amaya has crafted an
elegant and sophisticated analysis of the contemporary policies designed
to contain and criminalize Latina/os. Citizenship Excess demonstrates
that he is one of the leading Latina/o Media Scholars today."
--Angharad N. Valdivia, General Editor of the International Encyclopedia
of Media Studies and author of Latina/os
Drawing on contemporary conflicts between Latino/as and anti-immigrant
forces, Citizenship Excess illustrates the limitations of liberalism as
expressed through U.S. media channels. Inspired by Latin American
critical scholarship on the "coloniality of power," Amaya demonstrates
that nativists use the privileges associated with citizenship to
accumulate power. That power is deployed to aggressively shape politics,
culture, and the law, effectively undermining Latino/as who are marked
by the ethno-racial and linguistic difference that nativists love to
hate. Yet these social characteristics present crucial challenges to the
political, legal, and cultural practices that define citizenship.
Amaya examines the role of ethnicity and language in shaping the
mediated public sphere through cases ranging from the participation of
Latino/as in the Iraqi war and pro-immigration reform marches to labor
laws restricting Latino/a participation in English-language media and
news coverage of undocumented immigrant detention centers. Citizenship
Excess demonstrates that the evolution of the idea of citizenship in the
United States and the political and cultural practices that define it
are intricately intertwined with nativism.
