The Burden of Modernity

In this novel interpretation of cultural discourse in Spanish America, Alonso argues that Spanish American cultural production is marked by an internal rhetoric crisis that resulted from the adoption of discourses regarded as "modern" in historical and economic circumstances that are themselves the negation of modernity. Through a reading of texts by Sarmiento, Masilla, Quiroga, Vargas Llosa, Garcia Marquez and others, Alonso identifies the existence of this textual dynamics in works ranging from the 19th century to the present.