Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

by Sara Castro-Klarén (Editor), John Charles Chasteen (Editor), Sarah C. Chambers (Contributor)

How did the nationalisms of Latin America's many countries—elaborated in everything from history and fiction to cookery—arise from their common backgrounds in the Spanish and Portuguese empires and their similar populations of mixed European, native, and African origins? Beyond Imagined Communities: Reading and Writing the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America, discards one answer and provides a rich collection of others.

These essays began as a critique of the argument by Benedict Anderson's highly influential book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Anderson traces Latin American nationalisms to local circulation of colonial newspapers and tours of duty of colonial administrators, but this book shows the limited validity of these arguments.

Instead, Beyond Imagined Communities shows how more diverse cultural influences shaped Latin American nationalisms. Four historians examine social situations: François-Xavier Guerra studies various forms of political communication; Tulio Halperín Donghi, political parties; Sarah C. Chambers, the feminine world of salons; and Andrew Kirkendall, the institutions of higher education that trained the new administrators. Next, four critics examine production of cultural objects: Fernando Unzueta investigates novels; Sara Castro-Klarén, archeology and folklore; Gustavo Verdesio, suppression of unwanted archeological evidence; and Beatriz González Stephan, national literary histories and international expositions.

Genres: Nonfiction

252 pages, Paperback

First published December 23, 2003

About the author

Sara Castro-Klarén is Professor of Latin American Culture and Literature at The Johns Hopkins University. Her fields of specialization are the Modern Latin American Novel, Literary and Cultural Theory and Colonial Studies. She received her Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literatures from the University of California in Los Angeles in 1968. She taught at Dartmouth College (1970-83) and chaired the Department of Spanish and Portuguese (1979-82). She was the Chief of the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress for three years and joined the Hopkins faculty in the Spring of 1987. She has been the recipient of several teaching awards. Most recently the Foreign Service Institute conferred upon her the title of "Distinguished Visiting Lecturer" (1993). She was appointed to the Fulbright Board of Directors by President Clinton in 1999. Her research and publications have been sustained by a combined interest in anthropology, literature and theory. Her publications include El mundo magico de Jose Maria Arguedas (1973), Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa (1990) and Escritura, Sujeto y transgresion en la Literature latinoamericana (1989), along with Latin American Women Writers (1991), ed. with Sylvia Molloy and Beatriz Sarlo. More recently she has published many chapters in collections dealing with her current book length projects: subaltern subjects and the representation of cannibalism.