INVESTIGADORES
SZURMUK Monica
libros
Título:
Women in Argentina: Early Travel Narratives
Autor/es:
MÓNICA SZURMUK
Editorial:
University Press of Florida
Referencias:
Lugar: Gainesville, Florida; Año: 2001 p. 144
ISSN:
0-8130-1889-7
Resumen:
In this book, I trace the development of women´s travel writing in Argentina from 1830 to 1930 in order to show the  complexity of women´s inclusion in discourses of collective identities. I argue that women -and the feminine- took on different roles at different moments of Argentinean history. I show how white women´s access to print culture and political life was argued in terms not only of gender but also of ethnicity. I therefore delve into questions of whiteness and debate how whiteness as a characteristic which was gendered was paramount in the opening of spaces for women´s political and cultural participation. Rereading the expansion of Argentina into the frontier that characterizes this historical period, I show how forces of civilization responsible for the creation of the nation were coded as white and female, while the forces of barbarism were embodied by mestizo maleness. White women writers took advantage of their privileged space withing the narrative of civilization to intervene into debates of nationhood. Yet they used this discursive space to criticize key elements of the project of nation building such as immigration policies, emphasizing the places where the new nation would not only enfranchise but also disenfranchise. I explore the interconnections between personal and collective identities and argue that travel narratives both shape and are shaped by the model of Argentina as a white country. Reading text by women who belong to different literary and cultural traditions and breaking down the divisions between writers in colonized and colonizing context, I challenge the widely held assumption that women´s travel writing is a purely personal interior venture, and I show book not only discusses the relationship between nation building and gender in Argentina but also invites a comparative reading of the relationships of the roles of gender and ethnicity in the creation of print culture in the United States and Europe at that time.