Abstract
This chapter explores interactive processes of identity and memory formation, writing, and the constitution of ethnic boundaries among descendants of Slovenian migrants in Argentina through literature. The analysis employs instrumentalist and situational approaches of identity to examine ethnic renewal processes in migration contexts. The central hypothesis emphasizes that literature facilitates identity and memory construction among generations of immigrants who have neither identified themselves with Slovenianess nor forged and sustained a long-term bond with Slovenian communities in Argentina. The argument posits that for descendants, their narrative constructions of the past play a crucial role within the context of migration, allowing continued dislocations of individual and social identities. Writing and publishing biographies have become part of a process of reconfiguring personal identities and framing social memories, values, and their belonging. Creating new affiliations to imagined communities, biographical literature diversifies Argentina from within.
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Notes
- 1.
Literature has been a subject of study and is given heterogeneous definitions in diverse disciplines, which exceed the scope of the present chapter.
- 2.
While publishing biographies has been common among Slovenians around the world, in Argentina it has become a new phenomenon. Self-funded books are a fresh phenomenon not only among Slovenians, but also among other social actors in Argentina (Dujovne 2016).
- 3.
Narratives are discursive constructions that people create about their lives. (see Gullestad 1994).
- 4.
In this chapter, the term “nation” is understood as a product of the modern world. Following E. Gellner and E. Hobsbawm, Bell (2003, p. 68) defines nationalism as a political project, coterminous with the development of the modern state.
- 5.
Tisdel also discusses this topic in Chap. 6 (this volume).
- 6.
Tyrol is a historical region in the Alps, which extends over part of northern Italy and western Austria. Carinthia is the southernmost Austrian state or Land, located within the Eastern Alps.
- 7.
Nevertheless, the censuses of 1869 and 1895 reveal that most immigrants were Italian, followed by Spanish and then the French (Devoto 2009). In the 1880s Slavic people also arrived.
- 8.
This ideology of civilizing the nation was a prevalent part of the notion of modernization throughout Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean. Whereas white populations represented the civilization and progress of nations, the indigenous and black components became symbols of backwardness. See Segato (2002).
- 9.
Indigenous people of the central and southern part of Argentina were annihilated and definitively subjugated in 1879 in the “Desert Campaign,” followed by the conquest of the Gran Chaco in the north-east in campaigns in 1884 and 1911 (Radovich 2005).
- 10.
The Great Depression was a major global economic recession that occurred in the 1930s.
- 11.
The military coup of 1930 involved the overthrow of the Argentine democratic government of Hipólito Yrigoyen by the Argentine Patriotic League led by General José Félix Uriburu.
- 12.
Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine Army general and politician, who was elected President of Argentina three times, serving from June 1946 to September 1955.
- 13.
Editorial Dunken is one of many new “publishing houses” that appeared in Argentina in the 1990s. The publisher does not offer correction and editing services, which leads to published texts with spelling errors, doubtful data, and different writing styles.
- 14.
Some sources also mentioned that Argentinians used the xenophobic insult “(shitty) Polish” to refer to Slovenians. This was rarely discussed in the interviews I conducted, since the participants preferred to recall the past as idyllic and without big conflicts.
- 15.
In my fieldwork, I have noticed that many reidentification processes with Slovenianess in Argentina start after some personal crisis among young adults or older people who are about to retire.
- 16.
In Latin America and the Spanish Caribbean, “creole” means born in the “New World” territory as opposed to Europe. It denotes identification with Latin America and the Caribbean rather than Europe.
- 17.
An extensive list of publications about the topic “literature and immigration in Argentina” can be found in the following web link: https://inmigracionyliteratura.es.tl/Bibliografia.htm
- 18.
See also Fagerlid in this volume. Quoting Stein (2004), she sheds light on the double performativity of the novels. Novels not only help to construct new subject positions conceivable to protagonists but consequently also to readers.
- 19.
Furthermore, Slovenia recognized the author’s contribution and designated him honorary consul of Slovenia until 2017.
- 20.
Bindi (this volume) also discusses the effect of writing versus oral history.
- 21.
The only Slovenian association is in San Carlos de Bariloche, where 17 Slovenian exiles founded the “Slovenian Andean Club” in 1951.
- 22.
I am excluding from this analysis the tensions and contra-hegemonic discourses that emerged during the fieldwork conducted in Entre Ríos and questioned Bizai’s version of the past (See Molek 2016a). In Norpatagonia, a similar tension was observed, not regarding the book itself, but about the role assumed by the author in the community.
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Molek, N. (2020). Biography, Descent, and Slovenization: Literature and Slovenian Migrants in Argentina. In: Fagerlid, C., Tisdel, M. (eds) A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging. Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34796-3_5
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