Peripheral Transnationalism: The Ibero-American and Polish Avant-Gardes in Conversation

• In Event: REEES Think Tank Undergraduate Research Showcase

Abstract

Combining archival research with theoretical analysis, this project examines the direct interactions of the Polish and Ibero-American avant-gardes through their journal publications, migration patterns, and relevant secondary and tertiary literature. Additionally, the second aim is to tease out the theoretical underpinnings of the phenomenon in question through a consolidated schema which combines the center-periphery dualism with the borrowed terms of internationalism, cosmopolitanism, and transnationalism from Bradley Gorski and Philip Gleissner's Red Migrations: Transnational Mobility and Leftist Culture after 1917. By presenting evidence of these social formations which circumvented the hub of Paris and applying the provided theory to the given facts, this project argues that the unlikely cultural interchange between the Ibero-American and Polish vanguards constituted an example of transnationalism along the peripheries of the European avant-garde.

Author

• Andres Roa, U of Illinois at Chicago