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ABSTRACT Studies of Latin American culture have returned time and again to the issue of how to capture the many conflicts and tensions inherent in national, group, and individual identities of the region. This dissertation examines an overlooked component of identity debates: the experience of being anonymous or unrecognized. In particular, I focus on late twentieth and early twenty-first century representations of anonymity in Argentina and Brazil. These countries share various key characteristics: emergence from recent military dictatorships; accelerating urbanization and globalization; rapid transformation of public spaces and media technologies that shape the possibilities of expressing an identity and having it recognized. Within these contexts, my dissertation considers a corpus of novels and films centered on attempts to either escape anonymity or become anonymous. Chapter 1 analyzes the decay of family and community bonds as a source of recognition and social value in Fernando Bonassi’s Subúrbio and Guillermo Saccomanno’s El oficinista. Chapter 2 examines media technology and the relationship between audiences and celebrities. I read Alejandro López’s La asesina de Lady Di and Ignácio de Loyola Brandão’s O anônimo célebre as depictions of individuals seeking mass-media fame as a form of large-scale, public recognition. Chapter 3 looks at two cinematic representations of the bus 174 hijacking in Rio de Janeiro. José Padilha’s Ônibus 174 and Bruno Barreto’s Última parada 174 show the challenge of preserving the disruptive potency of the hijacker’s demand for recognition, and the danger of neutralizing it through conventional narrative tropes. Chapter 4 analyzes representations of “desired anonymity” in Sergio Chejfec’s novel Mis dos mundos and Albertina Carri’s film Los rubios. The first explores the freedom of anonymous wandering in cosmopolitan and digital spaces. The latter imagines the creation of a community in which the burden of post-dictatorship memory and identity can be de-individualized and shared. Taken together, these works illustrate the continued demand to identify oneself and be(come) recognized as a basis for everyday social-civil interactions. They also question the value and viability of expressing a clear identity or cohesive self-narrative in contemporary Argentine and Brazilian society. © Copyright by Adam Demaray, 2016 All Rights Reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS To my parents, Randi Malach and Bill Demaray. For all the love, support, and books that they have given me. Despite “anonymity” being the central topic of my dissertation, I would be remiss if I did not recognize the following people. My tremendous thanks go first to Idelber Avelar—for his guidance and patience in helping me formulate my topic from the earliest days, and for his incisive feedback along the way, which enabled me to truly understand and imagine the potential of this project. Thank you to Rebecca Atencio, who more than anyone else helped me discover Brazil and Brazilian culture, and challenged me to find new ways to study and appreciate them. Thank you to Antonio Gómez, who has been helping me to both expand and refine my point of view since my first semester at Tulane. I owe so much to the members of my committee, whose investment in my research and in my academic career has been invaluable, and whose own work continues to inspire me. This project never would have come to fruition without Sophie Esch, my dissertation buddy, who beat me to the finish line but nevertheless continued to read and comment on my work. On countless occasions, her feedback has allowed me to illuminate and hone my best ideas. I want to extend my appreciation and admiration to all the professors with whom I have had the honor of studying during my time at Tulane. My particular gratitude goes out Sophia Beal and Chris Dunn, whose courses directly contributed to my doctoral work. Thank you also to Leila and Jeremy Lehnen for hosting me back in Albuquerque and for suggesting different areas this project could explore. And to Antonio Gómez and Dale Shuger’s Dissertation Writing Group, which pulled me through some of the later legs of this process. Thank you to the Tulane University Department of Spanish and Portuguese as a whole, for giving me the opportunity spend these years studying literature, film, and culture in the city of New Orleans. Thank you also to Claudia DeBrito and Terry Spriggs, for their unfailing graciousness and efficiency. My enormous gratitude also goes out to Susana Chávez-Silverman at Pomona College, without whom I would never have started down the path of languages and literatures. Many thanks to Mallory Falk and especially to my mother, for their constant encouragement and their assistance in making my writing clean and readable. Finally, thank you to all my wonderful colegas at Tulane, who all at some point or another helped me to get my mind either off or back on this project. !ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………….….….ii INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..…….1 Chapter 1. TOXIC BONDS: CRISES OF RECOGNITION IN THE HOME AND ON THE STREET…….……………………………..…………………19 Subúrbio: Recognition in Ruins…..……………………………………..24 El oficinista: Dystopian Anonymity..……………………………………45 2. A CELEBRITY OF ONE’S OWN: MASS MEDIA, FAME, AND ANONYMITY………………………………………………………….73 Conceptions of Mass-Mediated Fame in Latin America .……………….79 O anônimo célebre: The (Im)possibilities of Fame……………………107 3. RE-PRESENTING FACELESSNESS: CINEMATIC RETELLINGS OF THE BUS 174 INCIDENT……………………………………………...138 Ônibus 174: Can the Hijacker Speak?……………………………….…141 Última parada 174: Losing Sandro………………………………….…168 4. NOT ONESELF: TOWARD DESIRED ANONYMITY..………………..…188 Mis dos mundos: Wandering Away from the Self.…………………..…190 Los rubios: Decentering Self-Narration.…………………………….…213 CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………243 NOTES………………………………………………………………………………….250 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..…………………………………………………………………….262 !iii !1 INTRODUCTION “How am I not myself?” - from the film I ♡ Huckabees What does it mean to be unrecognized? That question lies at the heart of this study—not only how one defines recognition, but also how one experiences its achievement or failure. The notion of identity—both group and individual—has historically been treated in affirmative terms, responding to questions such as: Who are you? What are you? Where are you from? What do you do? In Latin America, the socio-historical complexity of the region has only highlighted the absurdity of giving any single or straightforward answer. Theories of hybridity, mestizaje, and transculturation,1 to name only a few, have complicated the question of identity in significant and fruitful ways. The value of these attempts to define regional, national, and local identities is not necessarily to be found in whether they “resolve” a question of identity. Indeed, “identity” as a concept has only ever existed as a problem that demands but constantly eludes any fixed definition or articulation. As Zygmunt Bauman has said: at no time did identity ‘become’ a problem; it was a ‘problem’ from its birth—was born as a problem (that is, as something one needs do something about—as a task), could exist only as a problem [….] One thinks of identity whenever one is not sure of where one belongs; that is, one is not sure how to place oneself among the evident variety of behavioural styles and patterns, and how to make sure that people around would accept this placement as right and proper, so that both sides would know how to go on in each other's presence. ‘Identity’ is a name given to the escape sought from that uncertainty. (“From Pilgrim” 18-19) !2 Carlos Alonso has argued that a perpetual sense of “crisis” in Latin American cultural identity is precisely what has produced many of Latin America’s greatest cultural expressions (14-16). However, lurking in the background of debates about identity is the issue of being anonymous or unrecognized—in particular, the issue of how different spaces, media, and social norms restrict or negate the expression of an identity. The goal of this dissertation is to consider distinct ways in which this issue is perceived and represented in contemporary Argentine and Brazilian culture by analyzing a corpus of contemporary novels and films. In literary and culture studies, there is an understandable tendency to focus on all the forms of identity that were or can be expressed. Innumerable groupings and associations clearly still exist, yet the constant shifting, overlapping, and dissolution of identitary definitions calls into question their basic durability and viability (McCann 4). Even the most nuanced examinations of identity in Latin America have continued to be affirmative—continuing to state identity in terms of what a person is or what a people are. Likewise, a negation that complements an assertion of identity (i.e. what a person is not) normally still functions as affirmation: by not being “this,” one affirms the opposing identity of “that.” Yet to be unrecognized is to exist outside of these debates—to have an expressed identity that is denied or ignored, or to live and act in a way that defies definition. What we are dealing with, therefore, is the issue of perception. How does one experience being unrecognized by others, a feeling of being physically present yet socially absent? A number of terms could apply here, including anonymity, which !3 implies the lack of a name, and invisibility, which often implies social neglect or marginalization. The term I will use most, however, is “unrecognition,” emphasizing the multiple meanings of being “recognized”: 1) to have one’s presence or existence acknowledged; 2) to receive praise or acclaim; 3) to be acknowledged as familiar (from previous knowledge or contact). At its heart, identity is social—not only dependent on a network of opposing identities, but also on the acknowledgement of others. For the purposes of this investigation, I have found Stuart Hall’s definition of identity to be the most useful and adaptable as a theoretical framework.