Reading A Migrant Nation:the Aesthetics Of Internal Migration In 20th And 21st-century Peruvian Narratives
Open Access
- Author:
- Cuya Gavilano, Lorena
- Graduate Program:
- Spanish
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 24, 2013
- Committee Members:
- Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Julia Cuervo Hewitt, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
John Andres Ochoa, Committee Member
Nicolas L Fernandez Medina, Committee Member
Sophia A Mcclennen, Special Member
Melissa Wright, Special Member
Amara Leah Solari, Special Member - Keywords:
- Migration
Peru
aesthetics
race
narrative
film
20th-21st century - Abstract:
- This dissertation studies an aesthetic of spatial fractures—of connections and disconnections—that defines contemporary Peruvian narratives of internal migration. This aesthetic focuses not so much in the representation of fixed spaces, but in the representation of movements which create a fluid geography of spatial networks that paradoxically constrain the mobility of migrant characters. By focusing on movements rather than on spaces, this aesthetic leaves behind previous fixed geographies of the city or the countryside, characteristics of urban and indigenista narratives respectively. While other traditional writings on geographic mobility emphasize the discovery, formation, and/or development of new communities/spaces, Peruvian narratives of internal migration show their fractures. These narratives unfold alternative spaces that make the survival of migrant characters possible; these characters learn to live in the fractures and to contest their oppressive reality. Such an aesthetic of connections and of disconnections portrays asymmetrical conditions and differentiating practices that make it difficult for migrants to be seen as equals to non-migrants. Hence, this aesthetic does not avoid the representation of binary relationships that stigmatized the migrant as the Other; it rather spatializes binary oppositions to recreate extant social fractures.