In a provocative new approach toward understanding transnational
literary cultures, this study examines the specter of the
plantation, that physical place most vividly associated with
slavery in the Americas. For Elizabeth Russ, the plantation is not
merely a literal location, but also a vexing rhetorical,
ideological, and psychological trope through which intersecting
histories of the New World are told. Through a series of precise,
in-depth readings, Russ analyzes the discourse of the plantation
through a number of suggestive pairings: male and female
perspectives; U.S. and Spanish American traditions; and continental
alongside island societies.
To chart comparative elements in the development of the postslavery
imagination in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, Russ
distinguishes between a modern and a postmodern imaginary. The
former privileges a familiar plot of modernity: the traumatic
transition from a local, largely agrarian order to an increasingly
anonymous industrialized society. The latter, abandoning nostalgia
toward the past, suggests a new history using the strategies of
performance, such as witnessing, reticency, and traversal. Authors
examined include The Twelve Southerners, Fernando Ortiz, Teresa de
la Parra, Eudora Welty, Antonio Benitez Rojo, Gayl Jones, Toni
Morrison, and Mayra Santos-Febres, among others.
Applying sharp analyses across a broad range of texts, Russ reveals
how the language used to imagine communities influenced by the
plantation has been gendered, racialized, and eroticized in ways
that oppose the domination of an ever-shifting "North" while often
reproducing the fundamental power divide. Her work moves beyond the
North-South dichotomy that has often stymied scholarly work in
Latin American studies and, importantly, provides a model for
future hemispheric approaches."
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