Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Comparative Theory

In Latin American Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Comparative Theory, Román de la Campa explores the post-1989 era of Latin American literary studies, particularly the way in which theoretical production has responded to the collapse of left-wing state projects and the growing influence of market forces in academia. De la Campa suggests that in this context it becomes even more important to study the different ways in which national and regional imaginaries continue to shape Latin American literary studies in both Latin America and the United States. He asks whether we are witnessing the onset of new paradigms better able to comprehend or articulate the field in its ever-increasing complexity or a turn toward projects that are both more hermetic in their regional or national scope of application, as well as more immanent in their capacity to absorb difference in the abstract. De la Campa contends that the shifting grounds for Latin American postmodernism are particularly illustrative of how the post-1989 era converges on Latin American literary studies. As an example, he surveys the postcolonial turn, particularly as it pertains to two differing readings of testimonio, one largely articulated in the United States through the work of John Beverley and subaltern post-symbolic aesthetics, the other in Chile through the work of Nelly Richard\u27s cultural critique of the dictatorship and post-dictatorship. According to de la Campa the current state of Latin American literary and cultural studies calls for a new comparativism willing to recognize a growing field of contradictory differences among nations, regions, and scholars