Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890-1910 (Suny Series, Genders in the Global South)

__Revisits a foundational moment in Argentine history to demonstrate how the crisis of modernity opened up new possibilities for imagining kinship otherwise.__ Contents 8 list of illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: The Bunge Family Queerness, Kinship, and Modernity 16 Revising The Family Romance 23 Queer Studies And The Modern Family In Latin America 27 The Bunge Family Archive 34 Intimate Routes 39 Chapter One: Carlos Octavio Bunge Queer Desire and Family Fictions 44 Family Romance At The Turn Of The Century 48 La Novela De La Sangre: Rewriting Family Futures 51 Thespis: Putting On The Mask 71 Conclusion 103 Chapter Two: Sisters Writing, Sisters Reading the Diaries of Julia And Delfina Bunge 106 A Queer Archive 110 The Diary As Palimpsest 116 Sisters Writing, Sisters Reading 119 El Caso Delfina 125 A Queer Home 137 The Centennial 143 Conclusion 147 Chapter Three: Spectral Desires Queering the Family Album 152 The Portraiture Of The Bunge Family 160 Circulating Desire: Carlos Octavio Bunge 162 Conflicting Publics: Julia And Delfina Bunge 175 Family Reunion: Snapshots From Alta Gracia 186 Conclusion 202 Chapter Four: Family Pedagogy the Institutionalization of Kinship 204 Inter/national Pedagogy 209 Queer Teachings: From The Textbook 212 El Arca De Noé: For Love Of Family, School, And Country 216 Nuestra Patria: Pedagogy, Memory, And Masculine Angst 229 Conclusion 244 Chapter Five: National Essays, Home Economics the Argentine Oligarchy in Decline 246 The Nation As Past-future Family 248 Miscegenation: Between Promiscuity And Sterility In Carlos Octavio Bunge’s Nuestra América 251 Spiritual Feminism: Delfina Bunge’s Las Mujeres Y La Vocación 260 The Past Future Of White Nationalism: Alejandro Bunge’s Una Nueva Argentina 270 Epilogue: Toward A Queer Latin American Studies 282 Queer’s Hemispheric Contradictions 284 Queer Feelings: Love, Fear, Resentment, Vulnerability 286 Queer Studies And Decoloniality 292 Notes 298 Works Cited 314 Index 328 Winner of the 2020 Best Book in the Nineteenth Century Award presented by the Nineteenth Century Section of the Latin American Studies AssociationAs Argentina rose to political and economic prominence at the turn of the twentieth century, debates about the family, as an ideological structure and set of lived relationships, took center stage in efforts to shape the modern nation. In Argentine Intimacies, Joseph M. Pierce draws on queer studies, Latin American studies, and literary and cultural studies to consider the significance of one family in particular during this period of intense social change: Carlos, Julia, Delfina, and Alejandro Bunge. One of Argentina's foremost intellectual and elite families, the Bunges have had a profound impact on Argentina's national culture and on Latin American understandings of education, race, gender, and sexual norms. They also left behind a vast archive of fiction, essays, scientific treatises, economic programs, and pedagogical texts, as well as diaries, memoirs, and photography. Argentine Intimacies explores the breadth of their writing to reflect on the intersections of intimacy, desire, and nationalism, and to expand our conception of queer kinship. Approaching kinship as an interface of relational dispositions, Pierce reveals the queerness at the heart of the modern family. Queerness emerges not as an alternative to traditional values so much as a defining feature of the state project of modernization. "As Argentina rose to political and economic prominence at the turn of the twentieth century, debates about the family, as an ideological structure and set of lived relationships, took center stage in efforts to shape the modern nation. In Argentine Intimacies, Joseph M. Pierce draws on queer studies, Latin American studies, and literary and cultural studies to consider the significance of one family in particular during this period of intense social change: Carlos, Julia, Delfina, and Alejandro Bunge. One of Argentina's foremost intellectual and elite families, the Bunges have had a profound impact on Argentina's national culture and on Latin American understandings of education, race, gender, and sexual norms. They also left behind a vast archive of fiction, essays, scientific treatises, economic programs, and pedagogical texts, as well as diaries, memoirs, and photography. Argentine Intimacies explores the breadth of their writing to reflect on the intersections of intimacy, desire, and nationalism, and to expand our conception of queer kinship. Approaching kinship as an interface of relational dispositions, Pierce reveals the queerness at the heart of the modern family. Queerness emerges not as an alternative to traditional values so much as a defining feature of the state project of modernization."-- Provided by publisher Joseph M. Pierce is Associate Professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University, State University of New York.