Signs of the Americas

In this groundbreaking study of the overlooked yet primary influence of indigenous sign systems on Pan-American poetics, Garcia theorizes that sign systems like pictographs, hieroglyphs, petroglyphs, and khipu, rather than being dead and calcified systems of meaning and exchange, are very much alive and living in the skin of American (and transnational) poetics. -- On the Seawall Signs of the Americas reconceptualizes literary studies by foregrounding objects often subsumed or overlooked in modern and contemporary inter-American literary texts. Garcia rehearses a complex of ideas and forms--signs and situations, structures and events--in his proliferating arguments. Each chapter is a dynamic case study, producing startling combinations of poetic figures, geographic locations, and methodological frames. Signs of theAmericas is an ambitious, energizing, and original contribution to various fields of cultural scholarship. --Roberto Tejada, University of Houston Garcia's excellent book demonstrates how indigenous sign systems such as pictographs, petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and khipu continue to communicate to all who know how to activate and interpret them . . . These signs continue to make meaning in that dynamic area between the 'archive' and the 'repertoire, ' animated through use and practice. Signs of the Americas, drawing on contemporary art, activism, and legal practice, makes a compelling argument about why we all need to understand these highly expressive and powerful sign systems. --Diana Taylor, New York University In Signs of the Americas, Garcia pries us away from received notions. He reveals that pictographs say more than we have previously thought. Bold and conceptually beautiful . . . Garcia's poetics of anthropology and ethnography pay off very well here, especially his agility in framing figures to argue for creativity and agency. --Doris Sommer, Harvard University Edgar Garcia's Signs of the Americas ranges across disciplines in pursuit of a startling thesis: Nonalphabetic sign systems, such as petroglyphs, hieroglyphs, and even the still-undecoded Incan knot-writing known as khipu, have exerted a decisive influence on the Anglophone, Hispanophone, and Indigenous literature of the Americas. In substantiating this claim, Garcia synthesizes research in an unusually broad range of fields, including literary theory, Indigenous and ethnic studies, anthropology and ethnography, and the history of ideas. --Len Gutkin The Chronicle of Higher Education In Signs of the Americas, Garcia sets sparks flying by inviting us to explore the literature and theory created by 20th and 21st century writers who deploy sign systems that, according to the creation myth of European hegemony, alphabetized thought supposedly superseded and destroyed. . . . Signs of the Americas not only pries open a fascinating archive but also forces us to question the organizational principles that govern intellectual history and cultural criticism in this hemisphere. --David Gutherz New Books Network Signs of the Americas pierces through five centuries of prejudice to show how indigenous sign systems have wielded worldmaking powers. . . . Signs of the Americas paves new paths for many academic fields. Of course, the book gives Latinx studies, Latin American studies, and Native studies new ways of narrating the history of the western hemisphere. In turn, the book offers anthropology and literary studies sophisticated techniques for theorizing collective creativity. Most importantly, the book raises questions that cut across disciplinary formations. Now that we know how indigenous sign systems have influenced poetry, can we see how they have shaped other genres? --Carlos Alonso Nugent ASAP/Journal