Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America: Against the Destiny of Place (New Directions in Latino American Cultures)

This book examines Latin America's history of engagement with cosmopolitanisms as a manner of asserting a genealogy that links cultural critique in Latin America and the United States. Cosmopolitanism is crucial to any discussion of Latin America, and Latin Americanism as a discipline. Reinaldo Arenas and Diamela Eltit become nodal points to discuss a wide range of issues that include the pedagogical dimensions of the DVD commentary track, the challenges of the Internet to canonization, and links between ethical practices of Benetton and the U.S. academy. These authors, whose rejection of the comfort of regimented constituencies results in their writing being perceived as raw, vindictive, and even alienating, are ripe for critique. What they say about their relation to place with regard to their products' national and international viability is central. The book performs what it theorizes. It travels between methodologies, hence bridging the divide between cosmopolitanism and that alleged common space of Latin American identity as per the colonial experience, illustrating cosmopolitanism as a mediating operation that is crucial to any discussion of Latin America, and of Latin Americanism as a discipline. "Jacqueline Loss explores the vicissitudes of place - of home, exile, and migration - to develop a compelling interpretation that shows both the limits and possibilities of cosmopolitan criticism and writing. She probes an archive of cosmopolitan thought within and about Latin American culture and reinvests the concept with critical force for dealing with contemporary anxieties over the production and circulation of art and theory. Her readings of such authors as Reinaldo Arenas and Diamela Eltit suggest that their negotiations of the complexity of place are crucial to their works' national and international viability, illustrating the centrality of cosmopolitanism to Latin American cultural production as well as to Latin Americanism as a discipline."--BOOK JACKET Front Matter ....Pages i-x Cosmopolitanisms between the Americas (Jacqueline Loss)....Pages 1-42 A Guajiro’s Cosmos (Jacqueline Loss)....Pages 43-77 Just a Vieja de Barrio (Jacqueline Loss)....Pages 79-116 Face to Screen (Jacqueline Loss)....Pages 117-149 Uncomfortable Homes (Jacqueline Loss)....Pages 151-187 Back Matter ....Pages 189-230