This book takes on the challenge of conceptually thinking Paraguayan cultural history within the broader field of Latin American studies. It presents original contributions to the study of Paraguayan culture from a variety of perspectives that include visual, literary, and cultural studies; gender studies, sociology, and political theory. The essays compiled here focus on the different narratives and political processes that shaped a country decentered from, but also deeply connected to, the rest of Latin America. Structured in four thematic sections, the book reflects upon authoritarianism; the tensions between modern, indigenous, and popular artistic expressions; the legacies of the Stroessner Regime, political resistance, and the struggle for collective memory; as well as the literary framing of historical trauma, particularly in connection with the Roabastian notion of la realidad que delira [delirious reality].

Autorentext
Federico Pous is Assistant Professor of Spanish in the Department of World Languages and Cultures at Elon University, USA.

Alejandro Quin teaches modern and contemporary Latin American literature and culture at the University of Utah, USA.
Marcelino Viera is Assistant Professor of Spanish & Latin American Studies in the Department of Humanities at Michigan Technological University, USA.

Inhalt

1. Introduction: Exposing Paraguay.- 2. War and Dismemberment: The Paraguayan War According to León de Palleja's Diario (1866).- 3. Poetry and Revisionism. Notes on Authority and Restoration in Postwar Paraguay.- 4. Writing the State: The Re-Distribution of Sovereignty and the Figure of the Legislator in I the Supreme by Augusto Roa Bastos.- 5. Indigenous Art: The Challenge of the Universal.- 6. Inheritances of Carlos Colombino. Painting and the Making of a Democratic Paraguay.- 7. Interrupted Visions of History: Nineteenth-century Illustrated Newspapers and the History of (Popular) Art in Contemporary Paraguay.- 8. The Wings of Carlos Colombino: Architect, Artist, Writer (An Interview).- 9. Beyond Coercion: Social Legitimation and Conservative Modernization in the Stroessner Regime (1954-1989).- 10. 108/Cuchillo de palo (2010): Limits and Political Potentialities of Queer Countermemory.- 11. De-parting Paraguay: The Interruption of the Aesthetic Gaze in Siete Cajas (2012).- 12. Paraguayan Counterlives.- 13. Paraguayan Realism as Cruelty in Gabriel Casaccia's El guajhú.- 14. Rafael Barrett's Haunted Letter.