Beyond Individualism: Portraying Collective Selfhood in Latin American Literature and Art [Hardcover]

A sweeping analysis of “archetypal realism” in Latin American literature and art.

Beyond Individualismexamines the portrayal of collective identities over two centuries in Latin American literature and visual art. Lois Parkinson Zamora shows that many authors and artists are less concerned with singular selves than with selves-in-relation: less with individual autonomy than with communal affiliation. Their works—sometimes situated under the labels Neobaroque, magical realism, Surrealism, Expressionism, and idealism—resist the kind of psychological realism typical of European and North American novels, moving instead toward a wholly new kind of fiction.

Zamora calls this new Latin American form “archetypal realism” because its characters represent entities larger than themselves. They may embody entire communities, cultures, families, religious orders, or ideal planets. Through deft readings of collective characters in fiction by Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and more alongside the art of Diego Rivera, Remedios Varo, and Xul Solar, Zamora reveals a modernity based not on Enlightenment conceptions of selfhood but on community, collectivity, and kinship.Lois Parkinson Zamorais the Moores Distinguished Professor of literature and art at the University of Houston. Her books includeThe Inordinate Eye: New World Baroque and Latin American Fiction, also published by the University of Chicago Press.List of Figures
Preface. Characters and Communities

Introduction. The Other Enlightenment: Francisco Clavijero and “The Dispute of the New World”
Chapter 1. The Genealogical Imperative: Gabriel García Márquez and José Donoso
Chapter 2. Single Selves, Collective Selfhood: Ángeles Mastretta and Nellie Campobello
Chapter 3. Portraits of Power: Gabriel García Márquez, Rosa Bl3Ú