1 0
    £21.99 GBP
    £21.99 GBP
    Sale Sold out
    Free UK Shipping

    Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead

    The Real Thing
    Testimonial Discourse and Latin America

    Georg M. Gugelberger (Edited by)

    9780822318446

    Paperback / softback, published 20 December 1996

    328 pages
    23.5 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.635 kg

    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 place: 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

    Acknowledgments vii
    Introduction: Institutionalization of Transgression: Testimonial Discourse and Beyond (1995) / Georg M. Gugelberger 1
    Part I
    The Margin at the Center: On Testimonio (1989) / John Beverley 23
    Testimonio and Postmodernism (1991) / George Yudice 42
    Reclaiming Voices: Notes on a New Female Practice in Journalism (1991) / Margaret Randall 58
    Testimonio and Survival: Roque Dalton's Miguel Marmol (1991) / Barbara Harlow 70
    Spanish American Testimonial Novel: Some Afterthoughts (1994) / Elzbieta Sklodowska 84
    Testimonio in Guatemala: Payeras, Rigoberta, and Beyond (1991) / Marc Zimmerman 101
    No Secrets (1995) / Doris Sommer 130
    Part II
    What's Wrong with Representation? Testimonio and Democratic Culture (1995) / Santiago Colas 161
    On Literary and Cultural Import-Substitution in the Third World: The Case of the Testimonio (1992/93) / Fredric Jameson 172
    The Aura of Testimonio (1995) / Alberto Moreiras 192
    The Fantasies of Cultural Exchange in Latin American Subaltern Studies (1995) / Gareth Williams 225
    Beyond Testimonial Discourse: New Popular Trends in Bolivia (1995) / Javier Sanjines C 254
    The Real Thing (1995) / John Beverley 266
    Bibliography 287
    Index 305
    Contributors 315
    View full details