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Can Literature Promote Justice?: Trauma Narrative And Social Action in Latin American Testimonio - Couverture rigide

Nance, Kimberly A.

 
9780826515230: Can Literature Promote Justice?: Trauma Narrative And Social Action in Latin American Testimonio
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 0826515231 ISBN 13 : 9780826515230
Editeur : Vanderbilt University Press, 2006

Synopsis

As if in direct response to The New Yorker's question of "The Power of the Pen: Does Literature Change Anything?" Kimberly Nance takes up the relationship between ethics and literature. With the 40th anniversary of the testimonio occurring in 2006, there has never been a better time to reconsider its role in achieving social justice.

The advent of the testimonio--loosely, a political autobiography of a Latin American activist who hopes, through the telling of her life story, to bring about change--was met with a great deal of excitement by scholars who posited it as a radical new form of literature. Those accolades were almost immediately followed by a series of critical problems. In what sense were testimonios "true"? What right did privileged scholars in the U.S. have to engage accounts of suffering with traditional modes of criticism? Were questions of veracity or aesthetics more important? Were these texts autobiography or political screeds? It seemed critics didn't know quite what to make of the testimonio and so, after a brief bout of engagement, disregarded it.

Nance, however, argues that any form as prolific as the testimonio is well worth examining and that these questions, rather than being insurmountable, are exactly the questions with which scholars ought to be wrestling. If, as critics claim, that the testimonio is one of the most pervasive contemporary Latin American cultural genres, then it is high time for a comprehensive study of the genre such as Nance's.

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À propos de l'auteur

Kimberly A. Nance is Associate Professor of Spanish and Chair of the Department of Foreign Languages at Illinois State University.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Vanderbilt University Press
Date d'édition
2006
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0826515231
ISBN 13 
9780826515230
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
224
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible