Publication date:
07 July 2011Length of book:
174 pagesPublisher
Lehigh University PressISBN-13: 9781611460148
This book offers to rethink identities within contemporary Judeo-Argentinean fiction by dealing with the transforming notion of Jewishness and of national identity in Argentina. It focuses on the dialogue (and confrontation) between the narrative text and the imaginary national space it questions. By reviewing the new material conditions within Argentina and its diasporic communities, this book imposes a new reflection on what Judeo-Argentinean fiction is all about. It reflects on the shifting notion of identity, abandoning traditional definitions, in order to rather analyze how feelings of alienation and nostalgia echo an era of transculturation and floating borders. The novels that this book studies return to the past from a certain distance created by time and space. This distance leads the reader to question the relevance of geographical, cultural, and linguistic differences within identity formation.
Since its beginning, the research of Jewish Latin America has focused on the quest of Jewish immigrants for a consolidated identity, social, and cultural integration in their receiving societies, and recognition within the "official" and canonical national history. Traditional scholarship has paid special attention to the construction of collective memory and the dilemma of "double identity." Nonetheless, the transforming notion of otherness in the last few decades, associated traditionally with the Jewish character, requires a new approach when discussing contemporary affiliations of Jews in Argentina and their narrative representations. New waves of emigration from Argentina at the beginning of the new millennium, economic and social disintegration, general disillusion with the state apparatus, and the gaps left in the collective memory following the years of the military dictatorship redefine personal and collective identities and demand a careful reexamination of the concept of argentinidad and its cultural significances.
Since its beginning, the research of Jewish Latin America has focused on the quest of Jewish immigrants for a consolidated identity, social, and cultural integration in their receiving societies, and recognition within the "official" and canonical national history. Traditional scholarship has paid special attention to the construction of collective memory and the dilemma of "double identity." Nonetheless, the transforming notion of otherness in the last few decades, associated traditionally with the Jewish character, requires a new approach when discussing contemporary affiliations of Jews in Argentina and their narrative representations. New waves of emigration from Argentina at the beginning of the new millennium, economic and social disintegration, general disillusion with the state apparatus, and the gaps left in the collective memory following the years of the military dictatorship redefine personal and collective identities and demand a careful reexamination of the concept of argentinidad and its cultural significances.
This scholarly work explores the Judeo-Argentinean experience from different perspectives and reevaluates Jewish and Argentinean elements in contemporary fiction. It describes and analyzes the immigrant experience, the establishment of communitarian institutions and the integration of Jews within Argentinean society, as reflected in novels written by Mario Szichman, Sergio Chejfec, Gabriela Avigur-Rotem, Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, Ricardo Feierstein, and Andres Neuman. The book discusses notions of collective memory and identity from different angles as reflected in the literary text. There are extensive footnotes and a 13 page bibliography. The author is Assistant Professor of contemporary Latin American fiction and Jewish Latin American literature and culture at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She is also a research fellow at the S. Daniel Abraham Center for International and Regional Studies at Tel Aviv University. The book is a useful addition to Judaica collections in college, university and research libraries.