Visions of Transmerica

This book looks at Neobaroque Latin American fiction, poetry, essay and performance from the 1970s to the early 2000s in order to explore the cultural hybridization and transgressive identity transformations at play in these works. It shows how the ornamental style and boldly experimental techniques are an effective strategy in presenting decentered identities in sexually ambiguous, multiethnic, interracial, transcultural, and mutant characters, as well as in metafictional narrators and authors. In this way, the book demonstrates the potential of Neobaroque works to destabilize normative, essentialist and binary categories of identity. The study focuses on Latin America as a cultural macroregion, drawing on examples from a variety of countries, including Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and the US-Mexican border. Drawing on gender, queer, trans and Chicana feminist theory, it argues for an alternative approach to a model of the Self, or a theory of selfhood, derived from the exuberant style and experimental techniques of the Neobaroque.

Integrates recent advances in Cultural, Feminist and Chican@ Border Identity Theory Foregrounds the role of the Latin American Neobaroque in cultural hybridization and transculturation Looks at a broad spectrum of Latin American Neobaroque works

Auteur

Krzysztof A. Kulawik is Professor of Spanish Language and Latin American Literature and Culture at Central Michigan University, USA, and the author of Travestismo lingüístico: el enmascaramiento de la identidad sexual en la narrativa latinoamericana neobarroca [Linguistic Cross-Dressing: The Disguising of Sexual Identity in Latin American Neobaroque Narrative] (2009).

Contenu
Introduction.- 1 Boundaries and Transgressions: Presentation of Topic with Objectives.- 2 Identit-y/-ies in Motion: Hypotheses, Claims, and Other Aims.- 3 Why and Which (Latin) America? Why the Neobaroque?.- 4 (Un-)Situating Identity: A Discourse of Transgression and Decentering.- 5 Transgression and the Neobaroque Sign: Identity as a Discursive Process.- 6 Chapter Sequence and Methodology.- 7 Contextualizing with Existing Literature and Overview of Neobaroque Predecessors.- 8 Why Read This Literature? Relevance of Project and Interest to the Reader.- 9 Final Remarks on the Scope of This Study.