Argentina : stories for a nation / Amy K. Kaminsky.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kaminsky, Amy K.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Argentina--In literature.

Argentina.

Argentina--In motion pictures.

Argentina--Foreign public opinion.

Physical Description:

xvii, 282 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2008]

Summary:

By the end of the twentieth century, Argentina's complex identity-tango and chimichurri, Eva Peron and the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Falklands and the Dirty War, Jorge Luis Borges and Maradona, economic chaos and a memory of vast wealth-had become entrenched in the consciousness of the Western world.

In this wide-ranging and at times poetic new work, Amy K. Kaminsky explores Argentina's unique national identity and the place it holds in the minds of those who live beyond its physical borders. To analyze the country's meaning in the global imagination, Kaminsky probes Argentina's presence in a broad range of literary texts from the United States, Poland, England, Western Europe, and Argentina itself, as well as internationally produced films, advertisements, and newspaper features.

Kaminsky's examination reveals how Europe consumes an image of Argentina that acts as a pivot between the exotic and the familiar. Going beyond the idea of suffocating Eurocentrism as a theory of national identity, Kaminsky presents an original and vivid reading of national myths and realities that encapsulates the interplay among the many meanings of "Argentina" and its place in the world's imagination.

Contents:

Bartered butterflies

Identity narratives; or, It takes two to tango

Imperial anxieties

Europe's uncanny other

Victoria Ocampo and the Keyserling effect

The race for national identity

The other within

The outlaw Jews of Buenos Aires

Dirty war stories

Violent exclusions

The persistence of memory.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-273) and index.

ISBN:

9780816649488

0816649480

9780816649495

0816649499

OCLC:

191760088