Negotiating Difference in the Hispanic World

Individual and collective concepts of identity are developed through negotiations of difference. These negotiations are reliant on the intensity and length of the encounter with 'the other', and are heightened by socio-political and cultural conjunctures such as colonialism and globalisation.

This edited collection invites us to explore the different instances of cultural encounters in Latin America from the Conquest to the present day. It resituates Hispanic culture within the wider debate on identity, and investigates the intricate mechanisms whereby the latter is being moulded and remoulded in the last five hundred years. Its focal point is difference not as a topological sign of alterity, nor simply as an essential component of the Self, but as the mechanism whereby the idea of the Self is negotiated, uttered and performed.

The volume brings together discussions on identity from a broad range of international specialists in the fields of literary and cultural studies, cultural history, art history, translation studies and cultural anthropology. They make important theoretical contributions to current debates, maintaining a fine balance between theoretical argument and empirical study.