The Real Thing: Testimonial Discourse and Latin America

by Georg M. Gugelberger (Editor), John Beverley (Contributor), George Yúdice (Contributor)

Presented as the authentic testimony of the disenfranchised, the colonized, and the oppressed, testimonio has in the last two decades emerged as one of the most significant genres of Latin America’s post-boom literature. In the political battles that have taken place around the formation of the canon, the testimonio holds a special no other single genre of literature has taken up such a large part of current debate. Initially hailed in the 1970s as a genuine form of resistance literature, testimonio has since undergone a significant change in its critical reception. The essays in The Real Thing analyze the testimonio , its history, and its place in contemporary consciousness.
Although the literature of testimony arose on the margins of institutional power and its ends were in large part political change, the canonization of testimonio by the academic Left has moved it from margin to center, ironically bringing about the institutionalization of its transgressive and counter-hegemonic qualities. Discussing Latin American works ranging from Salvadorian writer Roque Dalton’s Miguel Marmol to I . . . Rigoberta Menchu , a work that earned its author a Nobel Prize, this collection explores how critical writing about testimonio has turned into discourse about the institution of academia, the canon, postmodernism and postcolonialism, and the status of Latin American studies generally. Contributors . John Beverley, Santiago Colás, Georg M. Gugelberger, Barbara Harlow, Fredric Jameson, Alberto Moreiras, Margaret Randall, Javier Sanjines, Elzbieta Sklodowska, Doris Sommer, Gareth Williams, George Yúdice, Marc Zimmerman

Genres: Academic

328 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1996

Reviews

[Andrew Bentley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent collection of perspectives on the testimonial genre of Latin American literature that saw its major debut through Rigoberta Menchú's book with Elizabeth Burgos (or vice versa?) These two women couldn't have been more different: one from a poor indigenous community in the Guatemalan highlands, the other a well-off Venezuelan living in Paris. Aside from pointing out how this and other factors affect how the testimonio is constructed, the contributors call attention to other examples of the genre in an attempt to define it. I particularly loved Marc Zimmerman's contribution because he introduces other pieces of overshadowed Guatemalan literature from the conflict era such as "Miguel Mármol" and "El trueno en la ciudad". His conclusion that testimonio writing is a sacred, ceremonial ritual left me speechless.