The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War

by Jean Franco

Overview

The cultural Cold War in Latin America was waged as a war of values--artistic freedom versus communitarianism, Western values versus national cultures, the autonomy of art versus a commitment to liberation struggles--and at a time when the prestige of literature had never been higher. The projects of the historic avant-garde were revitalized by an anti-capitalist ethos and envisaged as the opposite of the republican state. The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City charts the conflicting universals of this period, the clash between avant-garde and political vanguard. This was also a twilight of literature at the threshold of the great cultural revolution of the seventies and eighties, a revolution to which the Cold War indirectly contributed. In the eighties, civil war and military rule, together with the rapid development of mass culture and communication empires, changed the political and cultural map.

A long-awaited work by an eminent Latin Americanist widely read throughout the world, this book will prove indispensable to anyone hoping to understand Latin American literature and society. Jean Franco guides the reader across minefields of cultural debate and histories of highly polarized struggle. Focusing on literary texts by García Marquez, Vargas Llosa, Roa Bastos, and Juan Carlos Onetti, conducting us through this contested history with the authority of an eyewitness, Franco gives us an engaging overview as involving as it is moving.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674037175
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	07/01/2009
Series:	Convergences: Inventories of the Present
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	526 KB

About the Author

Jean Franco is Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Emeritus at Columbia University.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1 I Conflicting Universals 1 Killing Them Softly: The Cold War and Culture 21 2 Communist Manifestos 57 3 Liberated Territories 86 II Peripheral Fantasies 4 Antistates 121 5 The Black Angel of Lost Time 138 6 The Magic of Alterity 159 III A Cultural Revolution 7 Cultural Revolutions: Trouble in the City 179 8 The Seduction of Margins 201 9 Bodies in Distress: Narratives of Globalization 220 10 Obstinate Memory: Tainted History 234 11 Inside the Empire 260 Notes 279 Acknowledgments 325 Index 327

Editorial Reviews

Books that are so well crafted and so original that they make a difference in the evolution of a discipline do not come out often. This book by Franco, longtime literary and cultural observer of Latin America and professor emerita of Columbia University, is one such work. Here, Franco argues that literature in Latin America changed during the Cold War as it became part of the political environment; writers used their works to influence the conflict between Socialist realism and U.S. concepts of autonomy and freedom. In addition, writers often wrote to protect national and ethnic cultures and to support liberation struggles. Franco argues that the result was a devaluation of literature in Latin America just as the international community began to recognize its writing a case she makes splendidly with a careful reading of the texts. This book provides a unique understanding of both the literature and the politics of this important period in Latin American history. Long anticipated by scholars, it should be a part of all Latin American academic collections. Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ., Pleasant Grove, UT Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In this impressive study, Franco...tracks the collapse of the belief in utopia among Latin American writers from the Cold War to neoliberalism...Franco raises crucial questions in her fascinating exploration of the decline and vestiges of the lettered city. Essential reading for Latin Americanists and anyone interested in modern intellectual life.

Choice - D. L. Heyck

With seemingly effortless grace, Jean Franco teaches us to reread Latin America, showing the roots of 'global' cultural politics in the Cold War. The range is from hard politics to transvestite disidentifications; interspersed with lapidary textual reading and unfailingly innovative theoretical interventions.

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

With seemingly effortless grace, Jean Franco teaches us to reread Latin America, showing the roots of 'global' cultural politics in the Cold War. The range is from hard politics to transvestite disidentifications; interspersed with lapidary textual reading and unfailingly innovative theoretical interventions.--Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, author of A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (5/1/2002 12:00:00 AM)

Books that are so well crafted and so original that they make a difference in the evolution of a discipline do not come out often. This book by Franco, longtime literary and cultural observer of Latin America and professor emerita of Columbia University, is one such work...This book provides a unique understanding of both the literature and the politics of this important period in Latin American history.--Mark L. Grover "Library Journal" (5/1/2002 12:00:00 AM)

In this impressive study, Franco...tracks the collapse of the belief in utopia among Latin American writers from the Cold War to neoliberalism...Franco raises crucial questions in her fascinating exploration of the decline and vestiges of the lettered city. Essential reading for Latin Americanists and anyone interested in modern intellectual life.--D. L. Heyck "Choice" (11/1/2002 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher