Being in common
Subtitle: nation, subject, and community in Latin American literature and culture
By: Silvia N. Rosman.
Series: Bucknell studies in Latin American literature and theory
Publisher: Bucknell University Press; Associated University Presses
Published: 2003
Place of publication: Lewisburg [Pa.]; London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 151
Subjects: Carpentier, Alejo, 1904-; Martínez Estrada, Ezequiel, 1895-1964; Paz, Octavio, 1914-; Borges, Jorge Luis, 1899-; Spanish American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; National characteristics, Latin American, in literature
Description: "Being in Common analyzes key works of twentieth-century Latin American literature and culture as precursors of contemporary theories of globalization. Silvia Rosman studies how texts from the 1940s and '50s by major Latin American authors, such as Alejo Carpentier, Ezequiel Martinez Estrada, Octavio Paz, and Jorge Luis Borges, provide alternatives to traditional forms of national, linguistic, or geographical belonging and thus allow us to think the commonality of experience differently. These texts offer articulations of community that challenge the totalizing and often violent homogeneity of identity or difference, the priority of the Subject and the location of culture.

Rosman persuasively demonstrates how they explore ways of being in common - the communal relation - when the notion of a common being - a totalized conception of community - is shown to be untenable. In doing so she incorporates and looks beyond her predecessors theoretical resources to urgent contemporary preoccupations with how to imagine identity in a "post-national" moment."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p.142-149) and index.
Table of contents: title: The interrupted quest : rethinking nation, subject, and community in Latin American literature and culture; title: Writing place names : travel and theory in Alejo Carpentier's Los pasos perdidos; title: Image, history, tradition : Ezequiel Martínez Estrada's alter-nations; title: On being Mexican, for example : Octavio Paz and the dialectics of universality; title: Borges : on reading, translation, and the impossibility of naming.