Beyond Imagined Communities : Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

by Chasteen, John Charles; Castro-Klaren, Sara

• ISBN13: 9780801878534
• ISBN10: 0801878535
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-12-23
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr
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Summary

How did the nationalisms of Latin America's many countries -- elaborated in everything from history and fiction to cookery -- arise from their common backgrounds in the Spanish and Portuguese empires and their similar populations of mixed European, native, and African origins? Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, discards one answer and provides a rich collection of others. These essays began as a critique of the argument by Benedict Anderson's highly influential book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson traces Latin American nationalisms to local circulation of colonial newspapers and tours of duty of colonial administrators, but this book shows the limited validity of these arguments. Instead, Beyond Imagined Communities shows how more diverse cultural influences shaped Latin American nationalisms. Four historians examine social situations: Francois-Xavier Guerra studies various forms of political communication; Tulio Halperin Donghi, political parties; Sarah C. Chambers, the feminine world of salons; and Andrew Kirkendall, the institutions of higher education that trained the new administrators. Next, four critics examine production of cultural objects: Fernando Unzueta investigates novels; Sara Castro-Klaren, archeology and folklore; Gustavo Verdesio, suppression of unwanted archeological evidence; and Beatriz Gonzalez Stephan, national literary histories and international expositions.

Author Biography

John Charles Chasteen is professor of history at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Sara Castro-Klar+¬n is professor of Latin American Culture and Literature at Johns Hopkins University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Beyond Imagined Communities	p. ix
The Historians
Forms of Communication, Political Spaces, and Cultural Identities in the Creation of Spanish American Nations	p. 3
Argentine Counterpoint: Rise of the Nation, Rise of the State	p. 33
Letters and Salons: Women Reading and Writing the Nation	p. 54
Student Culture and Nation-State Formation	p. 84
The Critics
Scenes of Reading: Imagining Nations/Romancing History in Spanish America	p. 115
The Nation in Ruins: Archaeology and the Rise of the Nation	p. 161
An Amnesic Nation: The Erasure of Indigenous Pasts by Uruguayan Expert Knowledges	p. 196
Showcases of Consumption: Historical Panoramas and Universal Expositions	p. 225
Contributors	p. 239
Index	p. 243
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