•  
  •  
 

Negotiating Identities and Otherness: Race in Spain and Latin America / Negociando identidades y Otredad: Raza en España y América Latina

Introduction to the Fourth Volume

The editors, on behalf of the graduate students in the Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Kentucky, announce the publication of the fourth volume of Nomenclatura: Aproximaciones a los estudios hispánicos entitled “Negotiating Identities and Otherness: Race in Spain and Latin America / Negociando identidades y Otredad: Raza en España y América Latina.”

Postcolonialism includes a vast array of writers and subjects. In fact, the very different geographical, historical, social, religious, and economic concerns of the different excolonies dictate a wide variety in the nature and subject of most postcolonial writing. Gina Wisker has noted that it is even simplistic to theorize that all postcolonial writing is resistance writing. In fact, many postcolonial writers themselves will argue that their countries are still very much colonial countries, both in terms of their values and behaviors, and that these issues are reflected in their work. In her essay on postcolonialism, Deepika Bahri agrees, noting that while the definition of postcolonialism may be fairly boundaried, the actual use of the term is very subjective, allowing for a yoking together of a very diverse range of experiences, cultures, and problems. This diversity of definitions exists, notes Bahri, because the term postcolonialism is used both as a literal description of formerly colonial societies and as a description of global conditions after a period of colonialism. In this regard, according to Bahri, the notion of the “postcolonial” as a literary genre and an academic construct may have meanings that are completely separate from a historical moment or time period.

In this volume you will find academic contributions in English and Spanish that analyze the role of race in the formation of identity through the representation of both self and otherness in postcolonial Spanish and Latin American literary traditions. The authors provide answers to the following defining questions:
  • What is the current state of postcolonial studies with regards to race and otherness?
  • How can erotism question eurocentric conceptions of women’s black bodies to transform it into racial agency?
  • What do the Nineteenth-Century Cuban poet Juan del Casal and Twentieth-Century Puerto Rican poet Luis Palés Matos have in common regarding their nations?
  • What is the relationship between race and nationhood in the Nineteenth-Century foundational fiction Noli Me Tangere?
  • How did religious conversion and Islamophobia create otherness in Lope de Vega’s Los cautivos de Argel?
We invite you to read and ponder the works in the fourth volume of Nomenclatura: Aproximaciones a los estudios hispánicos and we encourage you to consider publishing with us in future volumes.

JM Persánch, Editor-in-Chief
Megan O'Neil, Managing Editor