Description
Book SynopsisImagining Modernity in the Andes deals with the intersection of projects of modernity and cultural representation in the Andes. The Peruvian novelist and anthropologist José María Arguedas occupies a privileged place in a study that charts the social, cultural, and intellectual transformations that took place in the Andes throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In its examination of political and literary indigenistas of the 1920s, applied anthropology in the 1950s, the novelistic response to emigration and urbanization, the theory of transculturation in the era of transnationalism, and the appearance of new visual technologies in a cultural context long defined by the oral-textual divide, Imagining Modernity in the Andes conducts the type of interdisciplinary approach which a full appreciation for the heterodoxies of Andean cultural production makes indispensable.
Trade ReviewArchibald's engaging and incisive commentary delves into the fascinating complexities of the indigenista movement in the Andes. J. M. Arguedas is central in her analysis, of course, yet she brings much more to the discussion: the practice of anthropological theory, the role of cultural agency in indigenous video production, and the political tensions of transnational urban contexts. -- Regina Harrison, University of Maryland, author of
Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes
Imagining Modernity in the Andes overcomes the narrowness of Arguedan studies to date by showing how Andean cultures have fundamentally shaped Latin America. It is an outstanding work and will undoubtedly prove to be a major contribution to Andean studies. -- Silvia Spitta, author of Misplaced Objects: Migrating Collections and Recollections in Europe and the Americas and Between Two Waters:
This multidisciplinary work deals with literature, cultural discourse, and some aspects of the social sciences in relation to new configurations of indigenista studies in Peru....The author starts with an analysis of novelists and essayists of the 1920s, seen here as the Peruvian founding fathers of the indigenista movement, and concludes with a study of recent depictions of urbanization and filmmaking in the 1990s. The fictional and anthropological works of José María Arguedas are central to this book, and Archibald examines them in conjunction with constructions of race, ethnicity, and political ideology. This informative overview complements major contributions to the field--Estelle Tarica's The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism (CH, Dec'08, 46-1959) and Jorge Coronado's The Andes Imagined (CH, Oct'09, 47-0744), both broad-based engagements with indigenismo. In terms of theory, all three titles are indebted to Benedict Anderson's seminal work on nationalism. Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty. * CHOICE *
Table of Contents
1 Acknowledgments 2 Introduction: Andean Modernities Chapter 3 1. Decolonizing the Aristocratic Republic Chapter 4 2. Literary Indigenismo Chapter 5 3. Science in the Andes Chapter 6 4. Andean Cosmopolitanism: The City as the Female Grotesque Chapter 7 5. Urban Transculturations 8 Conclusion: Film, Indigenous Video, and Indigeneity in the Andes 9 Notes 10 Bibliography 11 Index
