This book provides a groundbreaking analysis of the most prominent writers of contemporary Peru, in which literary works and cultural performances are illuminated through the categories and propositions of postcolonial theory. The study entails a discussion of thematic choices, representational strategies and political contexts, as well as a daring analysis of Vargas Llosa's Nobel Prize and Arguedas' suicide as paradigmatic instances in these authors' cultural and ideological development. Topics such as indigenismo , archaism, modernity, otherness, popular culture, and cultural diversity traverse through this book, which constitutes, more than a traditional academic exercise, a critical intervention in the field of Latin American studies.

Autorentext

Mabel Moraña is William H. Gass Professor of Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, where she is the Director of the Latin American Studies Program. She has published more than forty authored and edited books, including Bourdieu en la periferia (2014), Inscripciones críticas (2014), and Churata postcolonial (2015). In 2014, the Spanish-language edition of Arguedas/Vargas Llosa was the recipient of both the Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize, given by the Modern Language Associate and the Premio Iberoamericano by Latin American Studies Association.

Inhalt
Introduction.- 1 Opening.- 2 Arguedas and Vargas Llosa, or the Dilemmas of the Model Intellectual.- 3 Archaism as Floating Signifier.- 4 Language as a Battlefield (I): The Dilemma of the Sign.- 5 Language as a Battlefield (II): The Narcissism of the Voice.- 6 Toward a Poetics of Social Change: Truth, Modernity, and the National Subject in José María Arguedas.- 7 Which Truth?: Otherness and Melodrama in Vargas Llosa.- 8 Endpoint?: Death/The Nobel Prize.