The Tradition of Anonymity in the Andes

Bibliographic Data

ID2170137
AuthorsMartín Gaspar (0000-0002-9015-2838, corresponding author)
Year2012
Volume21
Issue3
Pages391-415
Publication date2012-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Latin American Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1356-9325 • E-ISSN: 1469-9575
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13569325.2012.711753
OpenAlexW2323468752
LanguageEN
References cited16

This essay examines the longstanding lettered tradition of representing the Andean native as anonymous, and what I view as a potential challenge to this tradition in Claudia Llosa'sLlosa, Claudia. 2006. Madeinusa, Madrid: Universal Pictures, Oberón Cinematográfica. [Google Scholar] film Madeinusa (2006). By following the gaze of the native as a common thread, I trace a genealogy of the figure of the anonymous native in Peruvian letters since the early twentieth century. Early essays and paintings of the native, I claim, display a basic politics of anonymity, while fictional works explore the narrative implications of and alternatives to this politics. Understood in terms of its formal economy, anonymity redistributes agency from the individual native to the observer, the outsider, the leader, or the community. I argue that the figure of the anonymous native is invoked and refunctionalized in a particular scene of Llosa's film, where the native's gaze is contaminated through associative montage with the gaze of a cow. The film produces a tension between plot and image that poses anonymity as a choice to the spectator, thus tapping into cultural history to expose it and perhaps defy it

Aesthetics · Agency (philosophy · Anonymity · Art · Art history · Gaze · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociology · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Latin American Literature Studies · Law · Philippine History and Culture · Philosophy · Psychology

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