The Spaces of Latin American Literature: Tradition, Globalization, and Cultural Production examines how Latin American writers, artists, and intellectuals have negotiated their relationship with Western culture from the colony to the present. De Castro looks at writers and intellectual polemics that serve as markers of the region's cultural evolution. Among the writers and artists studied are Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, Jorge Luis Borges, Caetano Veloso, and Alberto Fuguet. This book proposes an analysis of the region's literature rooted in its specific cultural, political, and economic locations.
This collection of essays studies the depiction of contemporary urban space in twenty-first century Latin American fiction. The contributors to this volume seek to understand the characteristics that make the representation of the postmodern city in a Latin American context unique. The chapters focus on cities from a wide variety of countries in the region, highlighting the cultural and political effects of neoliberalism and globalization in the contemporary urban scene. Twenty-first century authors share an interest for images of ruins and dystopian landscapes and their view of the damaging effects of the global market in Latin America tends to be pessimistic. As the book demonstrates, however, utopian elements or “spaces of hope” can also be found in these narrations, which suggest the possibility of transforming a capitalist-dominated living space.
The Spaces of Latin American Literature: Tradition, Globalization, and Cultural Production examines how Latin American writers, artists, and intellectuals have negotiated their relationship with Western culture from the colony to the present. De Castro looks at writers and intellectual polemics that serve as markers of the region's cultural evolution. Among the writers and artists studied are Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, Jorge Luis Borges, Caetano Veloso, and Alberto Fuguet. This book proposes an analysis of the region's literature rooted in its specific cultural, political, and economic locations.
Latin American Literature at the Millennium: Local Lives, Global Spaces analyzes literary constructions of locality from the early 1990s to the mid 2010s. In this astute study, Raynor reads work by Roberto Bolaño, Valeria Luiselli, Luiz Ruffato, Bernardo Carvalho, João Gilberto Noll, and Wilson Bueno to reveal representations of the human experience that unsettle conventionally understood links between locality and geographical place. The book raises vital considerations for understanding the region’s transition into the twenty-first century, and for evaluating Latin American authors’ representations of everyday place and modes of belonging.
This book examines the background and context of Latin America's political and socioeconomic landscape with a focus on space activities. Firstly, it discusses Latin America's contribution to this sector from an international relations perspective, and explores the debates around the establishment of a Latin American Space Agency. It then highlights space-related capacity building, Latin America’s participation in UNCOPUOS, and international space activities, agreements, and initiatives in Latin America. The second part is devoted to the national space infrastructures and space activities of Latin American states. It analyzes various spacefaring countries in the context of their intra-regional space relations and initiatives as well as their bi-lateral cooperation programs. This timely book is of interest to scholars and professionals working in the space field, especially those in Latin America and other emerging countries.
Through a comparative analysis of the novels of Roberto Bolaño and the fictional work of César Aira, Mario Bellatin, Diamela Eltit, Chico Buarque, Alberto Fuguet, and Fernando Vallejo, among other leading authors, Héctor Hoyos defines and explores new trends in how we read and write in a globalized era. Calling attention to fresh innovations in form, voice, perspective, and representation, he also affirms the lead role of Latin American authors in reshaping world literature. Focusing on post-1989 Latin American novels and their representation of globalization, Hoyos considers the narrative techniques and aesthetic choices Latin American authors make to assimilate the conflicting forces at work in our increasingly interconnected world. Challenging the assumption that globalization leads to cultural homogenization, he identifies the rich textual strategies that estrange and re-mediate power relations both within literary canons and across global cultural hegemonies. Hoyos shines a light on the unique, avant-garde phenomena that animate these works, such as modeling literary circuits after the dynamics of the art world, imagining counterfactual "Nazi" histories, exposing the limits of escapist narratives, and formulating textual forms that resist worldwide literary consumerism. These experiments help reconfigure received ideas about global culture and advance new, creative articulations of world consciousness.
A COMPANION TO LATIN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE “The work contains a wealth of information that must surely provide the basic material for a number of study modules. It should find a place on the library shelves of all institutions where Latin American studies form part of the curriculum.” Reference Review “In short, this is a fascinating panoply that goes from a reevaluation of pre-Columbian America to an intriguing consideration of recent developments in the debate on the modem and postmodern. Summing Up: Recommended.” CHOICE A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture reflects the changes that have taken place in cultural theory and literary criticism since the latter part of the twentieth century. Written by more than thirty experts in cultural theory, literary history, and literary criticism, this authoritative and up-to-date reference places major authors in the complex cultural and historical contexts that have compelled their distinctive fiction, essays, and poetry. This allows the reader to more accurately interpret the esteemed but demanding literature of authors such as Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Diamela Eltit. Key authors whose work has defined a period, or defied borders, as in the cases of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, César Vallejo, and Gabriel García Márquez, are also discussed in historical and theoretical context. Additional essays engage the reader with in-depth discussions of forms and genres, and discussions of architecture, music, and film This text provides the historical background to help the reader understand the people and culture that have defined Latin American literature and its reception. Each chapter also includes short selected bibliographic guides and recommendations for further reading.
This book reflects on translation praxis in 20th century Latin American print culture, tracing the trajectory of linguistic heterogeneity in the region and illuminating collective efforts to counteract the use of translation as a colonial tool and affirm cultural production in Latin America. In investigating the interplay of translation and the Americas as a geopolitical site, Guzmán Martínez unpacks the complex tensions that arise in these “spaces of translation” as embodied in the output of influential publishing houses and periodicals during this time period, looking at translation as both a concept and a set of narrative practices. An exploration of these spaces not only allows for an in-depth analysis of the role of translation in these institutions themselves but also provides a lens through which to uncover linguistic plurality and hybridity past borders of seemingly monolingual ideologies. A concluding chapter looks ahead to the ways in which strategic and critical uses of translation can continue to build on these efforts and contribute toward decolonial narrative practices in translation and enhance cultural production in the Americas in the future. This book will be of particular interest to scholars in translation studies, Latin American studies, and comparative literature.
Silviano Santiago has been a pioneer in the development of concepts crucial to the discourse of contemporary critical and cultural theory, especially postcolonial theory. The notions of “hybridity” and “the space in-between” have been so completely absorbed into current theory that few scholars even realize these terms began with Santiago. He was the first to introduce poststructuralist thought to Brazil—via his publication of the Glossario de Derrida and his role as a prominent teacher. The Space In-Between translates many of his seminal essays into English for the first time and, in the process, introduces the thought of one of Brazil’s foremost critics and theorists of the late twentieth century. Santiago’s work creates a theoretical field that transcends both the study of a specific national literature and the traditional perspectives of comparative literature. He examines the pedagogical and modernizing mission of Western voyagers from the conquistadors to the present. He deconstructs the ideas of “original” and “copy,” unpacking their implications for the notions of so-called dominant and dominated cultures. Santiago also confronts questions of cultural dependency and analyzes the problems involved in the imposition of an alien European history, the cultural displacements experienced by the Indians through their religious conversion, and the hierarchical suppression of native and Afro-Brazilian values. Elegantly written and translated, The Space In-Between will provide insights and perspectives that will interest cultural and literary theorists, postcolonial scholars, and other students of contemporary culture.
Latin American Literature at the Millennium studies canonical and peripheral literary texts that complicate links between locality and geographical place, revealing new configurations of the local. It explores the region's transition into the twenty-first century and evaluates Latin American authors' reconciliation of conflicting forces in their construction of everyday places and modes of belonging.
