University of Virginia Press Cannibal Modernities: Postcoloniality and the Avant-Garde in Caribbean and Brazilian Literature (New World Studies)

Unique in its inclusion of Brazil in a comparative study of literary texts and their engagement with Western modernity, ""Cannibal Modernities"" is the first post colonial study to show how the ""peripheral"" replications of modernity in contemporary Caribbean and Latin American texts differ crucially from their European models. Luis Madureira addresses issues that so many post colonial theorists have struggled with, particularly the complex interactions and antagonisms between indigenous cultures and the imperial cultures imposed upon them and the effort to ""provincialize the West."" Madureira's book diverges from existing critical texts, however, in crucial, thought-provoking ways. The specific literary traditions compared here - Brazilian modernism, negritude theory and poetry, as well as Caribbean literary theory and historical discourses in French, English, and Spanish - have not been brought together in a single study before. In addition, the book's theoretical model of comparison focuses on the complexities of colonial and post colonial identity and of nationhood and globalization, as well as on their agonistic engagement with Europe's enlightenment philosophy. ""Cannibal Modernities"" shows us it is precisely in those New World avant-garde movements that have been traditionally designated as imitative that the emergence of post-coloniality resides and, moreover, that Europe's foundational discourses of modernity are enabled and sustained by the very peoples and cultures that have been relegated to the margins by modernity. Review Cannibal Modernities offers for the first time a comparative exploration of Brazilian, French, and Spanish Caribbean literatures of modernism. Madureira's staggering erudition, linguistic talents, and subtle and provocative readings of many of the region's most important authors in the twentieth century provide rich dividends for the student of modernity in the Americas. - George Handley, Brigham Young University, author of Postslavery Literatures in the Americas: Family Portraits in Black and White About the Author Luis Madureira is Associate Professor in Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His work has appeared in Luso-Brazilian Review and the New Centennial Review, among other publications.