Analyzes the way North American academics have constructed Latin America.
In this timely book, Román de la Campa asks to what degree the Latin America studied in U.S. academies is actually an entity “made in the U.S.A.” He argues that there is an ever-increasing gap between the political, theoretical, and financial pressures affecting the U.S. academy and Latin America’s own cultural, political, and literary practices, and considers what this new Latin Americanism has to say about the claims of poststructuralism, postmodern theory, and deconstruction.
De la Campa focuses on the conduct of Latin American literary criticism in U.S. universities and compares this with the “Latin Americanism” of Latin America itself. He examines the translation of Latin American works into English, the careerism of U.S. intellectuals, the conduct of Latin American literary criticism in English, and the diaspora of Third World intellectuals. In a reconsideration of the vogue in Latin American literature and magical realism in light of new work by theorists residing in Latin America, he contrasts this work with critiques of Latin American discourses in the United States.
A critique of postmodern and postcolonial constructions as articulated differently in the United States and Latin America, this hard-hitting but fair-minded book provides a postdeconstructive perspective on culture and literature.
ISBN 0-8166-3116-6 Cloth £00.00 $47.95xx
ISBN 0-8166-3117-4 Paper £00.00 $18.95x
224 Pages 5 7/8 x 9 June
Cultural Studies of the Americas Series, volume 3
Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press
