The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy

This work is about a living legend, a young Guatemalan orphaned by government death squads who said that her odyssey from a Mayan Indian village to revolutionary exile was 'the story of all poor Guatemalans'.

Guatemalan indigenous rights activist Rigoberta Menchu first came to international prominence following the 1983 publication of her memoir, I, Rigoberta Menchu, which chronicled in compelling detail the violence and misery that she and her people suffered during her country's brutal civil war. The book focused world attention on Guatemala and led to her being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992. In 1999, a book by David Stoll challenged the veracity of key details in Menchu's account, generating a storm of controversy. Journalists and scholars squared off regarding whether Menchu had lied about her past and, if so, what that would mean about the larger truths revealed in her book.

In The Rigoberta Menchu Controversy, Arturo Arias has assembled a casebook that offers a balanced perspective on the debate. The first section of this volume collects the primary documents -- newspaper articles, interviews, and official statements -- in which the debate raged, many translated into English for the first time. In the second section, a distinguished group of international scholars assesses the political, historical, and cultural contexts of the debate, and considers its implications for such issues as the "culture wars", historical truth, and the politics of memory. Also included is a new essay by David Stoll in which he responds to his critics.

"Ron Robin's "Scandals and Scoundrels is a clever provocation but more: It opens into a fascinating tour through treacherous postmodern territories, culminating in an economical explanation for what he calls 'the inflation in deviancy spectacles, ' all in stylish prose, no mystification added."--Todd Gitlin, author of "Letters to a Young Activist

"An engrossing and convincing account of how the academic professions have lost much of their jurisdiction for disputes about scholarly integrity to popular media that prefer contentious litigation to patient, reasoned deliberation."--David A. Hollinger, author of "Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism

"Robin proposes a new way of thinking about the radically shifting nature of academic disciplines by using a set of recent controversies to explore the current state of society itself. Wonderfully readable, this is a book which should have a large and appreciative audience."--Marilyn Young, author of "The Vietnam Wars, 1945-1990

"Robin presentsa rather distressing picture of the academy as its boundaries have become more and more blurred and its standards indistinguishable from those of the rest of society. Cases of intellectual dishonesty and lack of professional integrity have often become sensational news, conveying a picture of academic corruption to the wider world, even as the latter has induced scholars to commodify their research and writing to suit its tastes. It is a fascinating story that says as much about contemporary society and culture as about the academic disciplines."--Akira Iriye, author of "Global Community

Testimonial narrative is considered to be both a constant in Latin American literature, as well as one of the most prominent features of the post-boom writing of the 1980s and 1990s; women have successfully assimilated this form and currently dominate the testimonial genre in Latin America. The essays in this volume provide an orientation to the woman-centered view of this genre by inquiring into the critical and theoretical debate on the subject as well as analyzing specific nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latin American women's testimonial texts. Woman as Witness also includes selections from two testimonial works by Argentine women to advance the creation of a canon of Latin American feminist testimonial.

The term "subalternity" refers to a condition of subordination brought about by colonisation or other forms of economic, social, racial, linguistic, and/or cultural dominance. Subaltern studies is, therefore, a study of power. Who has it and who does not. Who is gaining it and who is losing it. Power is intimately related to questions of representation-to which representations have cognitive authority and can secure hegemony and which do not and cannot. In this book John Beverley examines the relationship between subalternity and representation by analysing the ways in which that relationship has been played out in the domain of Latin American studies.Dismissed by some as simply another new fashion in the critique of culture and by others as a postmarxist heresy, subaltern studies began with the work of Ranajit Guha and the South Asian Subaltern Studies collective in the 1980s. Beverley's focus on Latin America, however, is evidence of the growing province of this field. In assessing subaltern studies' purposes and methods, the potential dangers it presents, and its interactions with deconstruction, poststructuralism, cultural studies, Marxism, and political theory, Beverley builds his discussion around a single, provocative question: How can academic knowledge seek to represent the subaltern when that knowledge is itself implicated in the practices that construct the subaltern as such? In his search for answers, he grapples with a number of issues, notably the 1998 debate between David Stoll and Rigoberta Mench over her award-winning testimonial narrative, I, Rigoberta Mench. Other topics explored include the concept of civil society, Florencia Mallon's influential Peasant and Nation, the relationship between the Latin American "lettered city" and the Apac Amaru rebellion of 1780-1783, the ideas of transculturation and hybridity in postcolonial studies and Latin American cultural studies, multiculturalism, and the relationship between populism, popular culture, and the "national-popular" in conditions of globalisation.This critique and defence of subaltern studies offers a compendium of insights into a new form of knowledge and knowledge production. It will interest those studying postcolonialism, political science, cultural studies, and Latin American culture, history, and literature.

"On one level, this is a brilliant scholarly answer to the bedeviling question asked by non-Latin Americanists, 'What is Latin American literature like?' On another level, it coordinates and clarifies, for specialists, the complex of current issues that are often confusing and even discouraging because they are incompletely understood."--John S. Brushwood, Roberts Professor Emeritus of Latin American Literature, University of KansasLiterature in Latin America has long been a vehicle for debates over the interpretation of social history, cultural identity, and artistic independence. Indeed, Latin American literature has gained international respect for its ability to present social criticism through works of imaginative creation.In this comprehensive, up-to-the-minute survey of research and opinion by leading Latin American cultural and literary critics, Naomi Lindstrom examines five concepts that are currently the focus of intense debate among Latin American writers and thinkers. Writing in simple, clear terms for both general and specialist readers of Latin American literature, she explores the concepts of autonomy and dependency, postmodernism, literary intellectuals and the mass media, testimonial literature, and gender issues, including gay and lesbian themes. Excerpts (in English) from relevant literary works illustrate each concept, while Lindstrom also traces its passage from the social sciences to literature.

Nine Nobel Peace laureates discuss human rights, conflict, and reconciliation with the conviction that morality is essential for personal, political, social, and economic balance. Biographies of each participant and photos included.