Afro-descendants, body and nation in Argentina: an exploration from literature (1837-1882)

Sammendrag

In this text, I propose to explore the representations of Afro-descendant bodies in a set of works of Argentine national literature from the 19th century. Then, I am interested in investigating the way in which a group of Afro-descendant poets from Buenos Aires stood in relation to such representations, made by members of the country's political and intellectual elites. The representations about the body, as well as the biopolitical function that the literary texts of the elite writers could have, allow us to approach the conjunction between race and nation-building in Argentina.