Poetics of Race in Latin America

Poetics of race offers the readers a combined historical, political and aesthetic approach to the symbolic representation of race in Latin America in different periods and cultural regions. Chapters focus on issues of social conflict, identity politics and self-recognition by historically marginalized populations, such as indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, and Asian immigrants.

Literary texts, cultural practices and visual arts (painting, film) are analyzed as representative moments in the process of social and political recognition of subaltern subjectivities and non-dominant cultures, providing insightful studies of negritude, indigenous cultures and Japanese communities in Latin America. Through the exploration of different media and alternative critical categories, Poetics of Race proposes new avenues for the comparative and intersectional study of race, gender and class in postcolonial societies.

Poetics of Race constitutes a critically and theoretically innovative analysis of racial and ethnic dynamics in Latin America, and their symbolic – artistic, ideological – representation. The book illustrates the relevance of cultural and racial minorities in different national contexts (particularly in Mexico, Brazil, the Andean region and the Caribbean) through the study of literary, filmic and visual productions that depict otherness, marginalization and popular resistance. The book focuses on negritude, indigenous cultures, andinismo, performance and cinematic discourses in which racial issues are displayed, elaborated and symbolized. The various critical approaches utilized in this volume also contribute to expand methodological horizons in the field while contributing to widening the corpus of literary texts and cultural practices in this area of studies.