MODERN AND MEDIEVAL LANGUAGES TRIPOS Part II
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Tuesday 5 June 2012 1.30 to 4.30
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Paper Sp. 13
CONTEMPORARY LATIN AMERICAN CULTURE
Answer three questions, at least one from each section. One or more answers must contain substantial discussion of literature.
Candidates for this paper may not draw substantially on material from their dissertations or material which they have used or intend to use in another scheduled paper. Candidates may not draw substantially on the same material in more than one question on the same paper.
Write your number not your name on the cover sheet of the answer booklet.
STATIONERY REQUIREMENTS SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS
20 Page Answer Book x 1 None
Rough work pad
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You may not start to read the questions printed on the subsequent pages of this question paper until instructed that you may do so by the Invigilator
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SECTION A
Topics in Contemporary Latin American Culture
1 ‘Yo no escribo la historia. La hago. Puedo rehacerla según mi voluntad, ajustando, reforzando, enriqueciendo su sentido y verdad.’ (Roa Bastos)
With reference to this quotation, examine the role played by writing in two or more dictatorship texts.
2 ‘Los relatos de la gran ciudad latinoamericana introducen ruido en las redes, distorsiones en el discurso global, a través de las cuales emerge la palabra de otros, de muchos otros.’
Discuss with reference to the work of two or more writers or filmmakers.
3 ‘Historical fiction rarely gives us the positivity of history. Instead, it portrays a drama of loss and dislocation.’
Discuss with reference to two or more authors.
4 ‘Hay un profundo cuestionamiento de la historia a través de un cuestionamiento de los códigos del cine.’ Discuss this characterization of post-dictatorship Argentine film with reference to work by two or more filmmakers.
5 ‘Más que escribir la mujer, la escritura femenina de posboom la desescribe.’
Discuss with reference to two or more authors.
6 ‘The turn to popular culture by Latin American writers aims to subvert élite cultural forms from within. However, instead of achieving this, it merely realigns literature with the eclipse of the nation state and the rise of a homogenized global mass culture.’
Discuss with reference two or more writers.
7 ‘Queer fiction captures sexuality “in the act”.’
Discuss with reference to the work of two or more authors.
8 ‘The subaltern is necessarily the absolute limit of the place where history is narrativized.’ (Spivak)
Discuss the applicability of this statement to two or more works of testimonio.
9 ‘These texts succeed in breaching the walls of the “lettered city”. They represent the “invasion” of the literary text by the “noise” from outside.’
Discuss with reference to two or more authors.
10 ‘En la “nueva” narrativa de la tierra, las fronteras entre lo natural y lo artificial, entre la naturaleza misma y el discurso “eco” globalizado, se han esfumado por completo.’
Discuss this characterization of postmodern ecological fiction with reference to two or more authors.
11 ‘Si el detective moderno fue un “lector” experto, ordenador de claves y textos dispersos, el detective “posmoderno” se ha convertido en un náufrago, perdido en los laberintos del espacio y del tiempo.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts by different authors/film directors.
12 ‘The irony of the contemporary rhetoric of testimony in the visual arts is that its practitioners are of privileged social standing and their works are received as aesthetic, not social, interventions.’
Discuss with reference to the work of two or more artists.
SECTION B
Writers, Film Directors and Artists
13 ‘Puig rechaza el concepto de la profundidad en la psicología humana. Para él, las motivaciones “subconscientes” de sus personajes son un mero juego de superficies massmediáticas.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
14 ‘In the work of Peri Rossi, a remarkable textual promiscuity is coupled with a nostalgia for meaningful relationships and melancholic identities.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
15 ‘La obra de Piglia representa una compleja reinscripción de la problemática nacional en el proceso posdictatorial de la integración violenta de la Argentina al mercado mundial.’ Discuss with reference to two or more novels or collections of short stories.
16 ‘La idea de “escribir con el cuerpo” no puede ser otra cosa que una metáfora, pero aun como metáfora tiene una potencia extraordinaria en la obra de Valenzuela.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
17 ‘The fundamental work performed by Diamela Eltit has to do with recapturing, through a violent encounter with writing, experiences and memories irreducible to informational records.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
18 ‘Bolaño’s works deal purely and simply with the banality of evil.’
Discuss.
19 ‘La narrativa de Aira supone una desautorización de los sistemas, de las jerarquías de sentido y del buen gusto, a favor de una monstruosa proliferación de relatos y perspectivas.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
(TURN OVER)
20 ‘In Restrepo’s work there is a yearning for History, “así con mayúscula”, but her characters are instead caught in its interstices, in the gaps and voids of shattered micro-histories.’
Discuss with reference to two or more texts.
21 ‘The denuncia at the heart of Solanas’s films is as much aesthetic as socio-political.’ Discuss with reference to two or more films by Fernando Solanas.
22 ‘Salcedo’s aesthetic of reworked recyclia and detritus confronts the viewer with the inevitably spectral nature of the act of bearing witness.’
Discuss.
23 ‘Yo soy el último gramático de Colombia.’ (F. Vallejo)
Discuss the relevance of this quotation to two or more texts by Vallejo.
END OF PAPER