Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002
Includes bibliographical references (pages 139-151) and index
In this examination of the cross between anthropology and literature in contemporary Latin America, Amy Fass Emery studies how Latin American writers' experiences and studies in the field of anthropology have shaped their representations of cultural Others in fiction. She approaches her subject first in broad terms and then in close textual readings of important writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Jose Maria Arguedas, and Miguel Barnet. Emery develops the concept of an "anthropological imagination" - that is, the conjunction of anthropology and fiction in twentieth-century Latin American literature. Emery also gives consideration to documentary and testimonial writings. Analyzing fictions by authors from Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, and Peru, Emery covers a wide geographical region, as well as a diverse group of topics
Subjects such as surrealist primitivism, the testimonio, the transcultural novel, and the relation of the anthropological imagination to the vexed question of postmodernism in the Latin American context are all given insightful deliberation. As the first extended study of the interrelations between anthropology and literature in Latin America, Emery's work will prove invaluable to a wide spectrum of Latin Americanists and to those with comparative interests in anthropology, twentieth-century literature, and post-modernism
The anthropological imagination -- The "anthropological flâneur" in Paris: Documents, Bifur, and collage culture in Carpentier's Ecué-yamba-O! -- The eye of the anthropologist: vision and mastery in José María Arguedas -- The voice of the other : anthropological discourse and the testimonio in Biografía de un cimarrón and Canto de sirena -- The "I" of the anthropologist : allegories of fieldwork in Darcy Ribeiro's Maíra -- Sa(l)vage ethnography : the cannibalistic imagination in Juan José Saer's El entenado -- Afterword : the anthropological imagination and the question of a Latin American postmodernism
