The Companion to Latin American Studies (review)

This illuminating collection of essays starts by questioning the very term "Latin America" and problematizing it as a stable concept. Latin America is a complex phenomenon, Philip Swanson notes in the Introduction, thereby inserting the collection directly into the discourse of identity that has prevailed in Latin American studies. The volume explores a full range of disciplines and topics, from politics and society to issues of race, gender and sexuality in Latin America by a variety of well-known authors in the field. The overarching aim may be said to be a more complex understanding of identity that goes beyond literature and culture, connecting identity with specific socio-political practices, although three of the twelve chapters are dedicated to literature alone.

In the first four chapters, although history per se is not the main concern, some historical background is provided, focusing on the tensions that emerged from the colonial times up to the processes of emancipation and independence, and how it all affects cultural productions in the twentieth century. Sifting through nineteenth-century travel writings, and moving through the globalization of agro-food and cartography, Gareth Jones creates a multifaceted argument for the ways in which the "South" has been defined, however erroneously, by the exoticizing imaginations of those in the "North." Arturo Arias next provides a concise but informative overlook of the colonial process and the independence movements, indicating how these precedents created the basis for Latin America's contemporary political chaos, and ultimately, their subordinate position and asymmetrical relationship of power to the West throughout history. Luis Fernando Restrepo analyzes the shared history of European colonialism as one of the unifying factors of the region, focusing on the Iberian colonization from the fifteenth century up until independence. Swanson, the editor, studies the phrase "civilization and barbarism" and how this phrase crystallized one of the principal concerns affecting Latin American identities and nationhood.

The next three chapters provide a picture of Latin American literature. While recognizing the diversity of the region, the chapters also reassess the notion of what "literary" means by incorporating forms of writing previously excluded from the canon (travel accounts, testimonial narrative, among others). Elzbieta Sklodowska offers a survey of the history of national literatures of the region, organizing the information by genre, and sorting out the different literary movements that have underlined an autonomous nationalism (indigenismo, costumbrismo, negrismo, etc.) as well as the ones that have encouraged cosmopolitanism (modernismo, boom, etc.). Brian Gollnick continues an examination of literature by offering an historical analysis of the literary studies and theories of Latin America, including foundational texts by Pedro Henríquez-Ureña and Angel Rama. William Luis starts his chapter on U.S. Latino literature by defining the terms Hispanic and Latino, then provides a short survey on the history of Hispanic literatures in the United States. A chapter on visual culture, by Andrea Noble, starts with an overview of cinema, continues the discussion with the Mexican muralists, and ends with Frida Kahlo and Colombian Fernando Botero, arguing that they both offer a complex vision of issues of identity and decolonization. The chapter on popular culture by Silvia Bermúdez offers a brief survey on different music trends, starting with tango, and later relating the origin of the Cuban son to santería, and connecting religious practices to the devotion of soccer and telenovelas.

Two important chapters, by Peter Wade and Nikki Craske, respectively, present an overview of race relations, and gender and sexual relations. Both start with some overall theory specific to their field—how to define race, how to define gender versus sexuality—to then offer an overview of the history of these discourses in Latin America. The volume ends with a chapter by Jon Beasly-Murray who analyzes the term latinidad in a global society, proposing that it has spread beneath the level of consciousness, everywhere, and certainly beyond its physical boundaries, posing the question how a...