Private Topographies Space, Subjectivity and Political Change in Modern Latin America

by Grzegorczyk, Marzena

• ISBN13: 9781403967480
• ISBN10: 1403967482
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-04-16
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In Private Topographies, Grzegorczyk identifies and analyzes the types of postcolonial subjectivity prevalent among the Creole (Euro-American) ruling classes in post-independence, nineteenth-century century Latin America as articulated through their relation to their surroundings. Exactly how did creole elites change their self-conception in the wake of independence? In what ways and why did they feel compelled to restructure their personal space? What contradictions did they respond to? Where and how were the boundaries between public and private constructed? How were the categories of race and gender relevant to this process? For the first time, this book links together political transitions (the end of the colonial period in Latin America) with "implacements"--attempts that people make to reorganize the space around them. By looking at cartographies of states and regions, the structure of towns, and appearance and lay-out of homes in literature from Mexico, Argentina and Brazil from this nineteenth century period of transition, Grzegorczyk sheds new light on the ways a culture remakes itself and the mechanisms through which subjectivities shift during periods of political change.

Author Biography

Marzena Grzegorczyk is a Polish born scholar, writer and filmmaker. She holds a PhD from Stanford University and an MFA in film directing from USC School of Cinema-Television. She was a candidate to the European Parliament from Poland. Currently, she teaches at UCLA.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Introduction: Private Topographies	1	(18)
Transition as a Culture of Event	4	(7)
Private Topographies	11	(8)
1. Travel, Experience, and Reflection: Readerly Topography in El Periquillo Sarniento	19	(28)
Colonial Identifications	20	(3)
Model(ing) Citizens	23	(3)
"To Be" or "To Appear"? An Experiment in Representation	26	(3)
The Anti-Aesthetics of Space	29	(2)
The Epistemology of Blurred Vision	31	(7)
Topography of Reflection	38	(9)
2. Theatricality: On Creole Agency in Sarmiento's Trilogy Civilización y barbarie	47	(28)
Topography as Discipline	48	(3)
A Museum of Wounds	51	(5)
The Synthesizing Subject	56	(10)
Creator of Images	66	(7)
On Form: Politically, Discursively	73	(2)
3. Lost Space: Juana Manuela Gorriti's Postcolonial Geography	75	(18)
A Postcolonial Vita	78	(1)
The Abandoned House	79	(4)
Negative Spatiality	83	(3)
On Collecting	86	(7)
4. Building in 1900: An Agoraphobic Tale	93	(22)
Ambiguity	94	(3)
This Old House	97	(5)
Narrating the Post-Heroic	102	(4)
Delineations: On Building and Writing	106	(3)
The Vertigo of Privacy	109	(3)
The Economy of Agoraphobia	112	(3)
5. Eclipse of Reason: Euclides da Cunha's "Improper City"	115	(16)
Between the Body and the Map	116	(2)
Process Against the City	118	(7)
Urban Confrontations	125	(2)
On Agitated Structures	127	(4)
Conclusion	131	(10)
Notes	141	(26)
Works Cited	167	(18)
Index	185