Mapping Constructions of Blackness in Argentina

Abstract

Studies on representations of blackness in the Argentine context generally argue that the consolidation of a model of national identity based on racial hierarchies resulted in a process of whitening of the population which, in turn, rendered the afro-descendants invisible in the country’s official history. This paper problematises the emphasis on invisibility and argues the need to move beyond this paradigm to a critical engagement with representations of blackness focusing on discursive operations of cultural appropriation. Thus, the first part of the paper looks at recent developments in the field in connec­tion with the question of representation and notions of cultural recuperation. The second half of the paper critically explores the treatment of blackness in Carlos Octavio Bunge’s Nuestra América (1903), which exposes how an am­bivalent and yet powerful notion of blackness was constructed as both mar­ginal and central to a not less ambiguous sense of "argentinidad”.