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Disorientations - Martin-Márquez, Susan - Yale University Press
  • Jun 23, 2008
    456 p., 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
    41 b/w illus.
    ISBN: 9780300125207
    ISBN-10: 0300125208
  • Cloth: $65.00 tx
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History
Religion
Literary Studies

Disorientations

Spanish Colonialism in Africa and the Performance of Identity

  • Susan Martin-Márquez
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This book explores from a new perspective the fraught processes of Spaniards' efforts to formulate a national identity, from the Enlightenment to the present day. Focusing on the nation’s Islamic-African legacy, Susan Martin-Márquez disputes received wisdom that Spain has consistently rejected its historical relationship to Muslims and Africans. Instead, she argues, Spaniards have sometimes denied and sometimes embraced this legacy, and that vacillation has served to destabilize presumably fixed borders between Europe and the Muslim world and between Europe and Africa.

 

Martin-Márquez analyzes a wealth of texts produced by Spaniards as well as by Africans and Afro-Spaniards from the early nineteenth century forward. She illuminates the complexities and disorientations of Spanish identity and shows how its evolution has important implications for current debates not only in Spanish culture but also in other countries involved in negotiating a modern identity.

Susan Martin-Márquez is associate professor, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and director, Cinema Studies Program, Rutgers University.

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