The historical distribution of power in Peru, characterized by segregation and oppression, changed drastically after its independence from Spain. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, the rigid social policies of the Colony gave way to ideas of tolerance, such as the indigenist movement of post-colonial Latin America. No longer considered enemies of the country, several minorities were gradually integrated in the Peruvian society, collaborating in the formation of a new national identity. This normalization was selective, however, and the new ideas of integration often involved a new and more pernicious control of the Peruvian nation. Central to this discourse is the one that the Peruvian mulatto writer Ricardo Palma presents in his Tradiciones (1864-1910), characterized by ambiguous representations of traditionally stigmatized individuals, such as Native Americans, African Americans, and women. Other groups, such as Creoles, Mestizos, or Mulattoes (like Palma), struggle to overcome their social boundaries in order to create a new set of identities built on idealized national models. The prevailing tendency in much of the research written about this situation has been to focus almost exclusively on the situation of minorities within society, neglecting the role played by these groups in the construction of the Peruvian national identity. Moreover, it has failed to address the 19th century social and psychological struggle among minorities to be recognized within the newly formed nation. My research addresses these issues in Peruvian studies using the examples of Palma’s Tradiciones, with the aim of exploring the particularities of the post-colonial new configuration of nation, identity, and power.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Temple University, 2004. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-195). Also available on the Internet.

<p>In my dissertation I propose that Álvaro Bisama's <italic>Caja negra</italic> is a book that both continues and defies the interventions in the field of culture articulated in Alberto Fuguet's <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic> and other texts associated with the McOndo approach to culture in Latin America; an approach that includes urban metropolitan spaces as well as mass-produced cultural products in the range of possible representations of daily life experiences in Latin America. I argue that, in order to do so, Bisama performs an oppositional, counterfactual and cultist appropriation of the history of the Chilean written, audiovisual and musical media productions of the 20th century, considering Chilean both the media productions that were made in Chile and the media productions that were consumed in the Chilean context even if they were made somewhere else. In <italic>Caja negra</italic>, the appropriation of such a wide catalogue of productions is achieved by inoculating the text with a significant amount of apocryphal films, books, authors, filmmakers, musicians, records and other data related to these productions and their producers. I show that the saturation of apocryphal data in <italic>Caja negra</italic> aims to create an alternate history of Chile through the construction of an alternate cultural field. However, the historical fact of Augusto Pinochet's <italic>coup d'état</italic> in 1973 remains unchanged. I argue that Bisama's display of apocrypha in <italic>Caja negra</italic> is a way of responding to the lack of reliability of the accounts of history, especially, the history of media productions in Chile, as a consequence of the actions taken by the military. Therefore, I propose that Bisama's approach to the genre of alternate history is political and consists of proposing the conjectural as a strategy to overcome the gaps and untrustworthiness of the accounts of history in a way that provides an alternative to the search for truth. Finally, I propose that <italic>Caja negra</italic> engages with popular and alternative cultures in a double edged way: On the one hand, it builds on the changes in the field of culture that were either observed, proposed or performed by the productions associated to McOndo, in a time that coincided with the dawn of both the democratic transition and the popularization of new technologies that promised to democratize the access to culture. On the other hand, it shows that active consumption and fanatic appropriation are deliberate and personal acts that, as such, depend more on those who perform them than on the products that are being appropriated. Popular culture is treated as a plurality of cultures, and the text is not a place to display it or fictionalize it, as it happens in <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic>. In <italic>Caja negra</italic> the codes of these pop cultures are shown yet remain veiled. Their apocryphal nature and the complex processes of fictionalization serve to protect them from overexposure and loss of their subcultural capital. In my dissertation, I observe that <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic> articulates a principle that rules the relationships between characters and between the characters and the reader, and I call it aesthetic empathy. I recognize this principle as fundamental in Fuguet's writing in the nineties. Also; I read in <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic> an apology of active and public critical consumption of cultural products. In my comparative reading of <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic> and <italic>Caja negra</italic>, I find that in the latter there is a shift in the perception of culture and its representation that functions as a response to the principle of aesthetic empathy and to the apology of critical consumption articulated in <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic>. I argue that this contestation to <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic> and McOndo is achieved by a process of adoption and experimentation with the limits of the more provocative traits of <italic>Por favor, rebobinar</italic>'s content and composition, such as the presentation of a cultural field, the saturation of data related to popular cultures, the fragmentary structure, the inclusion of metatextual interventions, and the emphasis in the specific nature of each fragment of writing through its structure and mediations. In sum, I present a reading of <italic>Caja negra</italic> as a text engaged in the intervention on the field of culture in Chile, articulated in continuity and contrast to its predecessors in the nineties.</p> / Dissertation

Through close readings of various texts that deal with issues of border, identity and the relationship between Haiti and Dominican Republic as well as with the flow of immigrants between Dominican Republic and the United States, this study introduce the trope of the “rayano” (the one that was born, lives or comes from the border) as an apt metaphor to explain the identity of Dominicans in the twenty-first century — an identity that should be viewed as one born out of movements, translations and interstices. The primary texts that this study will focus on will cover the Haitian-Dominican and Dominican-American experiences.  In terms of the former, El Masacre se pasa a pie (1973) by Freddy Prestol Castillo and The Farming of Bones (1998) by Edwidge Danticat are useful for analyzing the defining moment of the relationship between Haiti and Dominican Republic in the twentieth century: the 1937 border massacre of Haitians and Dominican-Haitians ordered by Dominican dictator Rafael L. Trujillo. In the case of the Dominican-American relationship, Dominicanish (2000) by Josefina Báez, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (2007) by Junot Díaz will be the texts through which it will be analyzed the Dominican diaspora and its relationship with the two defining spaces of Dominicanness in the twenty-first century: Santo Domingo and New York City. In addition to these texts, this study also will engage with the theoretical production regarding the triangular relationship between Dominican Republic, Haiti and the United States through an analysis of the different metaphors used by Lucía M. Suárez in The Tears of Hispaniola: Haitian and Dominican Diaspora Memory, Eugenio Matibag in Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint: Nation, State and Race in Hispaniola, and Michele Wucker in Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola.

Tesis (maestro en letras españolas)--Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor: Julio Ortega. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 202-211).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Text in English, with some Russian, French and Spanish. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 222-240). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

In this thesis I argue that José Lezama Lima's Paradiso is unique among Latin-American novels of the 1960s because it is a hybrid of literary genres - narrative and essay, as well as a "poetic system." Through an open literary framework, the author explores the essence of "cubanía" though language that is both colloquial and elaborate, both devoted to traditions and aiming for transgressions: a novel that reaches for the pinnacle of neobaroque prose. To sustain my argument, I have performed an exhaustive exegesis of my primary text, as well as extensive external research in secondary texts of the highest canonical reputation, about the baroque and the neobaroque including the works of Eugene D'Ors, Mariano Picón Salas, Severo Sarduy, Guillermo Sucre, Irlemar Chiampi, and the novel in discussion so well examined by Iván González Cruz, Julio Cortázar, and the sister of the author, Eloísa Lezama Lima, among others. I have considered broadly the features and peculiarities that cause Paradiso to excel as a novel, always keeping in mind Lezama Lima's distinctiveness as a writer of ironies implicit in the discourse of Latin-American otherness. In Paradiso, this discourse of copy and model, as well as of revenge on the dominant metropolitan center--all within the surroundings of a paradoxical challenge to European baroque patterns--takes root by means of a seldom-expressed and playful hybridism unparalleled in twentieth-century Spanish literature. My argument operates from the broad to the specific, first by defining and explaining, sometimes in dissenting terms, the baroque, its historical evolution and Spanish roots, its arrival in Spanish America, its new identity when synthesized with native traditions there, and its neo-baroque profile in the twentieth century. Finally we arrive at a meeting with "el Señor Barroco", Lezama Lima, himself, as he promenades the paved streets of old Havana under a gigantic, colorful parasol, buffeted by a dancing, tropical breeze, and holding in one hand a volume of Paradiso. He walks absentmindedly until he reaches the esplanade of the malecón. There, he puts aside his book, asks us to approach him, and then confesses to us the impetus of his lifelong obsession to lay the foundation of a poetic system of the universe in Paradiso.

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This dissertation explores from an interdisciplinary point of view the textual impact of globalization processes and their concurrent transformation of the cultural industry in the Spanish-language novel of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Here it is argued that the elimination of barriers to capital flows and foreign investment, in conjunction with changes in intellectual property laws and the implementation of new communication and information technologies, have led to the creation of multinational media conglomerates able to restrict the choices made by individuals on not only of what can be read, but also what can be listened to and watched. This work defends the idea that the metafictional frame found in works by the Chilean Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) and the Spaniard Enrique Vila-Matas (1948) epitomizes a novel approach to transnational writing. In their narratives, both authors portray and resist globalization by proposing a bricolage of stateless literati scattered across the globe in search of enigmatic writers, tantamount in my interpretation to out of print or unpublished books. Coincidentally, both novelists began their career in the same independent publishing house, the Barcelona-based Anagrama, and were later published under major imprints. Moreover, these recognized novelists, both recipients of the prestigious Herralde and Rómulo Gallegos literary prizes, have become points of reference for the next generation of Latin American and Spanish authors. / text