Description
Book SynopsisEzer Vierba's The Singer's Needle offers an innovative history of twentieth-century Panama that illuminates the nature of power and politics in a small but volatile nation. Using novelistic techniques, Vierba explores three episodes that proved critical to the shaping and erosion of contemporary Panamanian institutions: the establishment of a penal colony on the island of Coiba in 1919; the judicial drama following the murder of President Jose Antonio Remon Cantera in 1955; and the disappearance of a radical priest in 1971. The episodes are layered in different styles and perspectives, with the narrative voices both illuminating and concealing key moments that illustrate how powerful interests control and create social and political history. Vierba blends historical sociology with novelistic narrative and extensive empirical research, drawing on Michel Foucault's ideas about the inherent and intricate connections between power, interpretation, and representation. The result is a book t
Trade Review“
The Singer’s Needle is a stunning achievement: Imagine if Foucault had studied Panamá and written as clearly and compellingly as Camus. Immersing himself in the social, political, economic, and cultural history of twentieth-century Panamá, Vierba combines careful and creative archival research, sophisticated theory, and compelling storytelling. His book is an extraordinary work of history, about both what happened in the past and what it means to think and write about it today. Historians of other places and times will marvel at, and learn from, Vierba’s bold and brilliant blend of scholarship and art.” * James Goodman, Rutgers University *
“
The Singer’s Needle is a real page-turner—in fact, it’s a path-breaker. Reading Vierba’s unusual book is like playing hopscotch as you skid between its heterogeneous elements. The skill and artistry involved in sliding the different forms of writing and different voices on top of one another, and the intimate tone achieved, is astonishingly refreshing.” * Michael Taussig, Columbia University *
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The Singer’s Needle is required reading for anybody interested in the history of Panama and the role that places like Panama have played in the history of Latin America and the world." * Hispanic American Historical Review *
"Vierba employs a palimpsest of fiction and nonfiction writing to create a 'polyphonic history.'. . . The intricate weaving of voices, theoretical debates, and archival evidence forms a dazzling experience that immerses the reader in multiple interpretations alongside historical facts without devolving into a postmodern navel-gazing or trite observations on relativism and subjectivity. . . . it is a must read for any historian working on narrative forms as method. It is also worth picking up for no other reason than being a superbly written page-turner." * Historical Geography *
Table of ContentsEditor’s Preface
Part I: Coiba: An Introduction to the Panamanian Subject Chapter One: Penal Colonialism and National Sovereignty: Porras and the Liberal Reforms, 1912–1924
Chapter Two: Punishment and Subject Formation
Chapter Three: The Singer’s Report: Text and Critique in Coiba, 1920–1935
Part II: Theaters of Authority Chapter Four: The
Remonato, a Hybrid State: 1947–1955
Chapter Five: Trials of Authority: Legal Consciousness and Formal Struggles in the Postwar Era
Part III: On the Way to Chumumbito, Santa Fe Chapter Six: Héctor’s Hermeneutics: Radical Readings and Christian Liberation in Santa Fe de Veraguas, 1968–1971
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
