Latin Americanism

In this timely book, Roman de la Campa asks to what degree the Latin America being studied in so many U.S. academies is actually an entity "made in the U.S.A." He argues that there is an ever-increasing gap between the political, theoretical, and financial pressures affecting the U.S. academy and Latin America's own cultural, political, and literary practices and considers what this new Latin Americanism has to say about the claims of poststructuralism, postmodern theory, and deconstruction.

De la Campa focuses particularly on the conduct of Latin American literary criticism in U.S. universities and compares it with the "Latin Americanism" of Latin America itself. He examines the translation of Latin American works into English, the conduct of Latin American literary criticism in English, the careerism of U.S. intellectuals, and the diaspora of "third world" intellectuals. In a reconsideration of the vogue in Latin American literature and magical realism in light of new work by theorists residing in Latin America, he contrasts this work with critiques of Latin American discourses in the United States.