Argentina’s Partisan Past: Nationalism and the Politics of History (Liverpool Latin American Studies, 11) - Hardcover

Goebel, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1846312388 ISBN 13: 9781846312380

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Argentina's Partisan Past is a challenging new study about the production, the spread and the use of understandings of national history and identity for political purposes in twentieth-century Argentina. Based on extensive research of primary and published sources, it analyses how nationalist views about what it meant to be Argentine were built into the country's long drawn-out crisis of liberal democracy from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Eschewing the notion of any straightforward relationship between cultural customs, ideas and political practices, the study seeks to provide a more nuanced framework for understanding the interplay between popular culture, intellectuals and the state in the promotion, co-option and repression of conflicting narratives about the nation's history. Particular attention is given to the conditions for the production and the political use of cultural goods, especially the writings of historians. The intimate linkage between history and politics, it is argued, helped Argentina's partisan past of the period following independence to cast its shadow onto the middle decades of the twentieth century. This process is scrutinised within the framework of recent approaches to the study of nationalism, in an attempt to communicate the major scholarly debates of this field with the case of Argentina.

The book is a valuable resource to both students of Argentine history and those interested in the ways in which nationalism has shaped our contemporary world.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Goebel is Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter (lecturer/assistant professor) of Global History at the Free University Berlin and John F. Kennedy Fellow at the Center for European Studies, Harvard University.

Review

"An important book that is destined to become mandatory reference for anyone interested in Argentina's political and intellectual history of the twentieth century."--H-Soz-u-Kult

"Argentina's Partisan Past is an impressive book on a still vexed question: how to make sense of the political past of Argentina."--ILatin American Studies

"Goebel's book is a serious and successful attempt to see the debates between contrasting nationalist narratives not just as mirrors but also as factors in the political development of a nation."--INations and Nationalism

"Goebel offers a well- written, theoretically sophisticated, and empirically grounded work. The creation by the Argentine government of a National Institute of Historical Revisionism in 2011 additionally shows the significant role of history in Argentine political and cultural debates as well as highlights the contemporary relevance of Goebel's work."--Hispanic American Historical Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1846312388
• ISBN 13: 9781846312380
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 284