Description
Book SynopsisThe question What is Latin America? has been at the heart of writing from and about Latin America from Columbus' conquest to present-day discussions and nationalising projects. What this belies is the inherent question What is Latin America compared to Europe? This book lays bare the underlying logic of a Latin Americanist discourse through some of the continent's most influential thinkers, including Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José Martí, José Enrique Rodó, José Vasconcelos, Fernando Ortiz, Roberto Fernández Retamar, Néstor García Canclini, and Walter Mignolo.
Civilisation and Authenticity presents case studies of two of Latin America's most renowned and representative twentieth-century writers, the Cuban Alejo Carpentier and the Argentine Julio Cortázar and reveals how desire to define Latin America is entwined throughout their groundbreaking experimental novels, focusing on Carpentier's
Los pasos perdidos (1953) and Cortázar's
Rayuela (1963). New research i
Trade Review«‘Civilisation and Authenticity’ makes a worthy effort to summarize and synthesize the long-running internal debates about Latin America’s political and cultural identity. It also offers solid readings of Alejo Carpentier’s and Julio Cortázar’s novels that can serve as useful guides for students and scholars alike and shows its author to be a capable and serious scholar.» (Aníbal González, Professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Yale University)
