Extract (PDF) - Peter Lang

Introduction 23
which entails a rewriting of nineteenth-century relationships between the
indigenous peoples and white Europeans and Argentine creoles.
Paralleling the growth of interest in Patagonia, an increasing number
of cultural events that have the region as their central theme have been
organised on both sides of the Andes from the mid-1980s onwards – at
times with Chile and Argentina in partnership, at times separately. Additionally,
several Chilean and Argentine narrative and poetry anthologies
have been published,29 and particularly in the case of poetry, there is a strong
consciousness of how publishing houses and book fairs in Buenos Aires
and Santiago perceive these creative endeavours as peripheral alternatives
to the dominant literary culture. In such cultural endeavours, Patagonia
seems to operate at the frontier of the foreign and the familiar, the hegemonic
and the subversive, the unifying and the multifaceted.
Cristian Aliaga’s epilogue brings the volume to a close. Rather than
making new claims about the symbolic function of Patagonia in western
imagination, Cristian Aliaga’s text distances itself from academic pursuits
and seeks instead to acknowledge the many Patagonian stories that do not
often get told. Aliaga draws eclectically from a range of historical facts and
anecdotes; such examples stand for the extraordinary flexibility of the term
“Patagonia” as a cultural signifier.
Finally, to conclude, we would like to make a few further comments
on the rationale that guided the presentation of the essays in this volume
as well as some reflections on recent research developments on the topic.
Although the authors deal with texts produced in a period that spans
from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, we did not follow, strictly
speaking, a chronological order. By arranging the essays according to different
historical “moments” in the representation of Patagonia, we hope the
readers will be able to appraise the multiple discursive ramifications of the
narratives analysed here and the contexts in which these have been produced.
However, this book does not constitute a history of the representation
29 María Eguenia Correas, ed., Abrazo Austral: Poesía del sur de Argentina y Chile.
Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Instituto Movilizador de fondos Cooperativos, 2000;
María Concha García, ed., Antología de la Poesía de la Patagonia. Málaga: Diputación
Provincial de Málaga, 2006.