Civilisation and Authenticity ─ The Search for Cultural Uniqueness in the Narrative Fiction of Alejo Carpentier and Julio Cortazar

Focusing on the writings of Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) and Julio Cortazar (1914-1984), Demuro (Australian National U.) explores how 20th century Latin American literature assimilated historical expressions of Latin American cultural uniqueness both in the quest to define Latin American identity and as a Modernist renewal of technique and form. She combines three general approaches in her analysis: examination of the historical development of the Latin Americanist discourse (the sum of writings that have attempted to define Latin American culture, identity, and reality, often by way of reference to Europe); biographical accounts of Carpentier and Cortazar as situated historically in relation to the Latin Americanist discourse and in relation to how they formulated their poetics in relation to this discourse; and exegetical analysis of their writings that addresses how they implement this Latin Americanist project of poetics in literary practice. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Eugenia Demuro was awarded her PhD from the University of Sydney, Australia. Her interdisciplinary approach situates literature within historical, social, political, and cultural contexts of production. Dr. Demuro researches and writes across the areas of sociology, literature, and Latin American studies and translation. At present, she is working to understand the geopolitics of decoloniality and to examine what a decolonial aesthetics may look like. Dr. Demuro is Visiting Fellow in the School of Language Studies at the Australian National University.