Cosmopolitanisms and Latin America - (New Directions in Latino American Cultures) by J Loss (Hardcover)

About the Book

Given the aesthetic and political necessities to transform bodies of knowledge that are defined predominantly by place, this book evaluates cosmopolitanisms in and about Latin America and takes the term as a conceptual tool to address how Reinaldo Arenas, Diamela Eltit, Julian Schnabel, Benetton, and others elaborate diverse relations to the world.

Book Synopsis

This book examines Latin America's history of engagement with cosmopolitanisms as a manner of asserting a genealogy that links cultural critique in Latin America and the United States. Cosmopolitanism is crucial to any discussion of Latin America, and Latin Americanism as a discipline. Reinaldo Arenas and Diamela Eltit become nodal points to discuss a wide range of issues that include the pedagogical dimensions of the DVD commentary track, the challenges of the Internet to canonization, and links between ethical practices of Benetton and the U.S. academy. These authors, whose rejection of the comfort of regimented constituencies results in their writing being perceived as raw, vindictive, and even alienating, are ripe for critique. What they say about their relation to place with regard to their products' national and international viability is central. The book performs what it theorizes. It travels between methodologies, hence bridging the divide between cosmopolitanism and that alleged common space of Latin American identity as per the colonial experience, illustrating cosmopolitanism as a mediating operation that is crucial to any discussion of Latin America, and of Latin Americanism as a discipline.

Review Quotes

"Exploding the distinction between local and cosmopolitan in a series of wonderfully counter-intuitive and aesthetically nuanced readings, Jacqueline Loss takes a proud place in the already brilliant company of Latin American theorists of cosmopolitanism."--Bruce Robbins, Columbia University
"A striking, original, and eloquent contribution to the field, as well as a fine meditation on cultural traveling. Loss reveals not only a fluency in the critical theory that is currency in the US academy, but also a command of the scholarship written from the perspective of Latin American inquiry."--Roberto Tejada, University of California, San Diego
"Jacqueline Loss' remarkable book ingeniously breaks the mold of all previous discussions about cosmopolitan writing in Latin America. Loss inaugurates a new way of analyzing post-Boom literary production and its complex commodification in the age of neo-liberal globalization. Loss lucidly traces how the work and fame of "discrepant" writers Reinaldo Arenas and Diamela Eltit have traveled beyond their national place of articulation--Cuba and Chile--to circulate globally as cult objects in U.S. Latin American and postcolonial studies, transnational publishing, "indie" filmmaking, the Internet, postmodern fashion magazines, and other current cultural markets. Latin American cosmopolitanism is no longer a predictable chapter in a conventional literary history; it becomes a dynamic itinerary of often unexpected re-contextualizations in both hemispheric and virtual space in which the commitment to local issues and representations can still navigate and outlast the vast tides of world integration."-Cesar A. Salgado, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin

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About the Author

JACQUELINE LOSS is an Assistant Professor of Latin American Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut, USA.