Beyond Human

Vital Materialisms in the Andean Avant-Gardes

Tara Daly

2019
238 pages
$37.95
ISBN 9781684480685
Bucknell Studies in Latin American Literature and Theory

In the Andes, indigenous knowledge systems based on the relationships between different beings, both earthly and heavenly, animal and plant, have been central to the organization of knowledge since precolonial times. The legacies of colonialism and the continuance of indigenous cultures makes the Andes a unique place from which to think about art and social change as ongoing, and as encompassing more than an exclusively human perspective. Beyond Human revises established readings of the avant-gardes in Peru and Bolivia as humanizing and historical. By presenting fresh readings of canonical authors like César Vallejo, José María Arguedas, and Magda Portal and through analysis of newer artist-activists like Julieta Paredes, Mujeres Credo Comunidad, and Alejandra Dorado, Daly argues instead that avant-gardes complicate questions of agency and contribute to theoretical discussions on vital materialisms: the idea that life happens between animate and inanimate beings - human and non-human - and is made sensible through art.

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Reviews

"In recent years, a critical reevaluation of the avant-garde movements and their legacy has been taking place in Latin American literary and cultural studies. Beyond Human offers an innovative contribution to the understanding of the avant-garde and its legacy in the Andean region. With an approach that combines political philosophy and ecocriticism with current debates about the "'new materialism," Tara Daly proposes a pluralistic view of avant-garde Andean arts, and argues that their uniqueness within the broad panorama of twentieth-century Vanguardisms centers on their reorientations of the multiple relationships among humans and the natural world, partly inspired by the indigenous cultures of the Americas. Cutting through the mainly sociopolitical readings that have traditionally been applied to the Andean avant-garde, Daly argues compellingly that these artistic movements are best understood in terms of a 'vitalistic materialism' that sought to establish a uniquely Andean middle way between capitalist commodification and Marxist utopianism."
- Aníbal González, Yale University

"Beyond Human offers an important reading that adds to ongoing discussions of new materialism ... [A] very interesting book that proposes a fresh reading of materiality in the Andes."
- Hispanic Review, Spring 2020, Vol. 88, No. 2

"It is a mark of a meaningful and committed literary criticism to respond and comment on its object of study in content and form, to be at once inescapably and intentionally influenced by the aesthetics of the studied cultural objects. At the same time, it is a mark of a rigorous scholar to distance herself enough from the object of study in order see its less observed facets. It is a difficult balance to strike in our intellectual endeavours. Tara Daly's book Beyond Human accomplishes just that. It rigorously studies five intellectuals from Peru and Bolivia, with the help of detailed textual analysis, and aided by a solid revision of literature on the Avant Garde in the Andes."
- Bulletin of Spanish Studies, May 2020, Vol. XCVII, No. 2

"Recommended."
-Choice

About the author:

Tara Daly, assistant professor of Spanish at Marquette University, is the co-editor of Decolonial Approaches to Latin American Literatures and Cultures (Palgrave 2016). She has published on visual art and literature from both the central Andes and the Amazon regions of Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador.

Distributed by Rutgers University Press

Cloth: $150.00, 978-1-6844-8068-5; EPUB: $37.95, 978-1-6844-8069-2