Dictatorships in the Hispanic World

Transatlantic and Transnational Perspectives

By (author) Patricia Swier, Julia Riordan-Goncalves Contributions by Ana Corbalán, Carmen Faccini, Irene Gómez Castellano, Yolanda Jurado Rojas, Vek Lewis, Rafael Lara-Martínez, Rick McCallister, Ana Leon-Tavora, Antonio Traverso, Niamh Thornton, Rafael Ocasio

Publication date:

18 July 2013

Length of book:

360 pages

Publisher

Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Dimensions:

235x159mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781611475890

This book broaches a comparative and interdisciplinary approach in its exploration of the phenomenon of the dictatorship in the Hispanic World in the twentieth century. Some of the themes explored through a transatlantic perspective include testimonial accounts of violence and resistance in prisons; hunger and repression; exile, silence and intertextuality; bildungsroman and the modification of gender roles; and the role of trauma and memory within the genres of the novel, autobiography, testimonial literature, the essay, documentaries, puppet theater, poetry, and visual art. By looking at the similarities and differences of dictatorships represented in the diverse landscapes of Latin America and Spain, the authors hope to provide a more panoramic view of the dictatorship that moves beyond historiographical accounts of oppression and engages actively in a more broad dialectics of resistance and a politics of memory.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1Feminine Voices of Resistance against Dictatorships: Prison Memories from Spain and Argentina, Ana Corbalán
2 Nostalgia, Memory and Politics in Chilean Documentaries of Return, Antonio Traverso
3 National History and Resistance in Ricardo Piglia’s Respiración artificial and Juan Goytisolo’s Reivindicación del Conde don Julián, Julia Riordan-Goncalves
4 Counter-discourse and Exile in the Poetry of Rafael Alberti and Mario Benedetti, Carmen Faccini
5 On Food, Hunger and Parasites: Female Strategies against Censorship in Nada and La plaça del diamant, Irene Gómez-Castellano
6 Reimagining Gendered Identities in Laforet's Nada and Díaz’s Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” Patricia Lapolla Swier
7 Queering the Cuban Exile: Reinaldo Arenas’s Memoirs as a Sexual Outlaw, Rafael Ocasio
8 The World within the Island: The International Projection of Cuban Artists’ Books and Prints: 1985-2009, Ana León-Távora
9 Puppet Theater: Staging Social Inequality during the Porfiriato, Yolanda Jurado Rojas
10 Wide-eyed Boys and Star Kids: Children and Violence in Voces inocentes (2004) and La lengua de las mariposas (1999), Niamh Thornton
11 Cosmovisiones and (in)appropriate/d Others: A Critical Reading of Santiago Roncagliolo's Noir Novel, Abril rojo, Vek Lewis
12 On the Annals of a History of Silence Fragments of ’32 from 1932, Rafael Lara-Martínez and Rick McCallister
About the Contributors
Index

Exceeding the normal scope of comparative and contrastive work, this volume contains essays which showcase the role of culture as a source of catharsis for traumatized writers, and an enabler of post-conflict resolution.... Overall, this is a coherent and admirably balanced set of essays that exemplifies the productiveness of the transnational and transatlantic approach, which enriches not only scholarly understanding of the convergences between cultures dealing with dictatorship and its aftermath, but also of writers’ multifarious difficulties and successes in articulating their dissent in highly repressive societies, and surprisingly, as the case of Reinaldo Arenas demonstrates, in democracies.