Argentina: Stories for a Nation, and: The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory (review)

In Argentina: Stories for a Nation, a book about trans/national imaginaries, representation, and the possibilities of representation as a productive process, Amy Kaminsky examines cultural artifacts to meticulously consider Argentina as it is represented from within, as well as how it is represented by, and exists in the minds of, others. Throughout, Kaminsky considers why those in Argentina are so interested and invested in what others believe about it as a nation. Through a thorough examination and analysis, the author demonstrates how Argentina's own understanding of itself is deeply related to what others imagine and believe it to be. It is in this relational play across boundaries that Kaminsky introduces the notion of a trans/national imaginary. Revealed trans/national and transcultural relations demonstrate a reciprocal and relational productivity contributing to the trans/national myths that constitute Argentina over time and space. Importantly, Kaminsky demonstrates how contexts that produce a postcolonial subject ultimately do "violence to the indigenous people," who are made invisible throughout the productions and representations of Argentina (31).

Catherine Ramírez also explores trans/national imaginaries and how they invisibilize resistant, transgressive, and ultimately gendered identities. In The Woman in the Zoot Suit: Gender, Nationalism, and the Cultural Politics of Memory, Ramírez simultaneously considers U.S. nationalism and Chicano cultural nationalism, particularly as these have served to obscure, if not altogether erase, the pachuca from the historical record. The Woman in the Zoot Suit, Ramírez explains, is a book about history as a contested production with competing interpretations. The distinction of and engagement with these two competing nationalisms makes this work uniquely compelling. Ramírez approaches nation as "official" and "unofficial," as well as racialized and gendered, in order to consider multiple and competing myths of nation, particularly for the pachuca. Like Kaminsky, she considers a multiplicity of cultural productions and artifacts, as these are implicated in contradictory nationalist imaginaries.

Both Kaminsky and Ramírez complicate the historical record and, therefore, understandings of the social actors who populate these records, not only to resist historical silences and/or misrepresentations, but also to resist the homogenizing tendencies that can occur when matters of nation and identity are considered. Each author carefully reflects on the discursive mis/representations of nation as a spatialized location constituted by myths that contribute to trans/national identities. In reading these works in tandem, I recalled the work of Emma Pérez (1999), whose decolonial imaginary is, for me, at play in both texts. According to Pérez, it is the decolonial imaginary that often makes room for revisioned histories that resist and can serve to transform historical misrepresentations in order to consider not only a historical presence, but also diverse historical roles for those previously obscured or silenced in and by dominant historical narratives. I have become increasingly interested in how spaces and social discourses converge to reproduce and/or resist dominant narratives. As I argue elsewhere, in order to ascertain how different discourses and spaces are implicated in the production and subversion of historical narratives and their produced invisibilities, we must attend to the ways in which such discourses and spaces are imbued with and shaped by ideologies and relations of power (Massey 2005). Kaminsky and Ramírez each prove adept at creatively and critically attending to such matters.

The chapters in Argentina give readers an understanding of the trans/ national imaginaries that have been constructed and that construct Argentina. In addition to considering the ways in which Argentina has existed and exists in European and American imaginaries (and how important such imaginaries are to Argentina), Kaminsky includes considerations and distinctions among filmmakers, writers, visual artists, and academics. She carefully...