Prof. Ángel A. Rivera
Publications [Books]:
Eugenio María de Hostos and Alejandro Tapia y Rivera: Avatares de una modernidad caribeña. Status: Accepted for publication by Peter Lang, New York.
Abstract:
The objective of this book is to examine the construction of a national subjectivity in the context of modernization during the nineteenth century in Puerto Rico. By analyzing the literary strategies deployed by Eugenio María de Hostos and Alejandro Tapia y Rivera one can gain insight about the devising of a national subject in a colonial context and the role of fiction in this construction. Both authors used their writing as a vehicle that would help them to imagine a new body: An individual who would be able to define a path to be followed by the members of the recently constructed imagined community that would lead it to modernization. Therefore, the main theoretical approaches utilized in this book are related to theories about the body and its representation in literature, chaos, the formation of national discourses, performance, modernity, and modernization.