Fake Originals. Collecting Latin America

Abstract

Fake Originals: Collecting Latin America offers a new lens on narratives of regional identity through studying material culture and literature. My central argument is that the circulation of these Latin American objects within transnational collecting networks dislocates Latin American discourses of regional authenticity. I analyze objects in three different collections as case studies —a botanical specimen in Harvard University’s Latin American botanical collection; a Brazilian banknote in the American Numismatic Society’s Latin American banknotes collection; and an allegedly Aztec figurine in the Dumbarton Oaks indigenous art collection. In each chapter, I follow the trajectory of one single object to unpack its alleged originality and to understand how Latin America was represented as either a space of primal nature, an emerging marketplace, or a privileged site of original culture. I call the objects I study fake originals because as I trace their contingent, arbitrary trajectories, their authenticity as signifiers of Latin America’s particularistic character is called into question. My methodology combines careful analysis of objects and close reading of published and unpublished materials such as correspondence, memoirs, travel accounts, journals, and other archival records. Moreover, as I study these objects and collections, I reassess canonical literary texts about and from Latin America. Although each chapter engages extensively in close reading, I am not interested in merely analyzing literary representations of objects but rather in drawing from material culture’s lessons to read literature through a new lens.