Doris Sommer – författare

Originally published in 1992, Nationalisms and Sexualities addresses questions of how notions of identity are shaped by discussions of nationalism and sexuality. The book looks at a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, on a wide range of geographical regions and historical moments. The volume departs from social scientific paradigms that treat nation and sexuality as discrete and autonomous entities. Its contributors respond instead to emerging issues that redefine the horizons of what is globally considered today as "the political": how the formation of sexual, gendered, racial, and/or class identities have contributed to the formation of sexual, gendered, racial, and/or class identities, and vice versa; how technologies of representation play a role in the constitution of national and sexual identities; how colonialism and postcolonialism have altered consolidations of national and sexual identities.

Originally published in 1992, Nationalisms and Sexualities addresses questions of how notions of identity are shaped by discussions of nationalism and sexuality. The book looks at a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, on a wide range of geographical regions and historical moments. The volume departs from social scientific paradigms that treat nation and sexuality as discrete and autonomous entities. Its contributors respond instead to emerging issues that redefine the horizons of what is globally considered today as "the political": how the formation of sexual, gendered, racial, and/or class identities have contributed to the formation of sexual, gendered, racial, and/or class identities, and vice versa; how technologies of representation play a role in the constitution of national and sexual identities; how colonialism and postcolonialism have altered consolidations of national and sexual identities.

Sommer encourages readers to entertain the creative possibilities inherent in multilingualism. With her characteristic wit and love of language, she focuses on humor—particularly bilingual jokes—as the place where tensions between and within cultures are played out. She draws on thinking about humor and language by a range of philosophers and others, including Sigmund Freud, Immanuel Kant, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hannah Arendt, and Mikhail Bakhtin. In declaring the merits of allowing for crossed signals, Sommer sends a clear message: Making room for more than one language is about value added, not about remediation. It is an expression of love for a contingent and changing world.

Based in North and South America, scholars from fields including anthropology, performance studies, history, literature, and communications studies explore specific variations of cultural agency across Latin America. Contributors reflect, for example, on the paradoxical programming and reception of a state-controlled Cuban radio station that connects listeners at home and abroad; on the intricacies of indigenous protests in Brazil; and the formulation of cultural policies in cosmopolitan Mexico City. One contributor notes that trauma theory targets individual victims when it should address collective memory as it is worked through in performance and ritual; another examines how Mapuche leaders in Argentina perceived the pitfalls of ethnic essentialism and developed new ways to intervene in local government. Whether suggesting modes of cultural agency, tracking exemplary instances of it, or cautioning against potential missteps, the essays in this book encourage attentiveness to, and the multiplication of, the many extraordinary instantiations of cultural resourcefulness and creativity throughout Latin America and beyond.

Contributors. Arturo Arias, Claudia Briones, Néstor García Canclini, Denise Corte, Juan Carlos Godenzzi, Charles R. Hale, Ariana Hernández-Reguant, Claudio Lomnitz, Jesús Martín Barbero, J. Lorand Matory, Rosamel Millamán, Diane M. Nelson, Mary Louise Pratt, Alcida Rita Ramos, Doris Sommer, Diana Taylor, Santiago Villaveces

Contributors. Carlos J. Alonso, Antonio Benítez-Rojo, John Beverley, Debra A. Castillo, Arcadio Diaz-Quiñones, Juan Flores, Mary M. Gaylord, José Limón, Josefina Ludmer, Francine Masiello, Antonio Mazzotti, Walter D. Mignolo, Sylvia Molloy, Mary Louise Pratt, Vincente Rafael, Julio Ramos, Susana Rotker, Roberto Schwarz, Diana Taylor, Nancy Vogeley