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In a speech delivered in October 1968, at the Inca Garcilaso de la Vega Award ceremony, the Peruvian novelist, anthropologist, and 'indigenist', Jose Maria Arguedas, one of the most influential and polemical writers of the twentieth century in Latin America, stated the following. "I am not acculturated, I am a Peruvian who proudly, like a happy demon, speaks Christian and Indian, Spanish and Quechua". A little over a year later while completing EL ZORRO DE ARRIBA Y EL ZORRO DE ABAJO, Arguedas wrote the following prophetic sentence: "I will not survive the book". Three weeks later, this transcultural 'happy demon' ended his novel with "Nov. 28, 1969. I choose this day because it won't interfere so much with the functioning of the University". He then proceeded to sign the novel by firing two bullets into his head. In this course we will uncover the happy demons of Jose Maria Arguedas' writing as a fundamental means of examining the antinomies of Latin American modernity and modernization, of analyzin g the limits and failures of transculturation and of magic realism, and of reading the beginning of the end of Utopia in Latin America. In other words, we will study the ways in which the understanding of Arguedas affords us particular and privileged insi ght into (and critique of) the complexities of twentieth century Andean (and Latin American) cultural and political history.
Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.
COURSE FORMAT: Lecture/Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: HA RLAN Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE
Last Updated on MAR-24-2000
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459