Masquerade and Social Justice in Contemporary Latin American Fiction by Helene Carol Weldt-Basson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Masquerade and Social Justice in Contemporary Latin American Fiction by Helene Carol Weldt-Basson Niamh Thornton Weldt-Basson, Helene Carol. Masquerade and Social Justice in Contemporary Latin American Fiction. U of New Mexico P, 2017. 266 pp. This is an ambitious and wide-ranging book that may well lead to an opening out of new approaches to contemporary Latin American fiction. Masquerade has considerable performative and allegorical potential to interrogate normative categories of gender, race, and class. This is amply explored by the author through close textual analysis and a wide-reaching mapping out of the potentialities of masquerade as trope, conceit, and motif. Weldt-Basson centres her focus on justice, an ethical and legal category that has considerable scope as an approach. The book is divided into five chapters according to different forms of justice: disguise and distributive justice, postmodern justice, postcolonial structural justice, allegories of transitional justice, and historical justice. Some, such as transitional justice, fall under conventional legal or judicial categories, whereas others, such as postcolonial structural justice, do not. The use of justice as a recurrent title and reference point makes implicit allusion to jurisprudence that is not followed through in the analysis. Consequently, there is a sense of unfulfilled potential in the discussion regarding justice and its contingent potential currency and saliency. An academic book needs to fulfill multiple criteria including careful presentation of ideas, rigorous engagement with existing scholarly work, and an advancement of knowledge. This book fulfills many of these criteria. However, I read it frustrated that the writer was not pushed by her editors to present a more fully realized thesis. This frustration is founded in the points at which the merits of the book meet its shortcomings. The author has clearly carried out considerable research into a wide range of fields from literary scholarship to transitional justice. But, these are presented rather than interrogated. In their presentation, the author demonstrates a canny ability to synthesize a density of literature, which, unfortunately, frequently leads to a flattening out of the complexities of these fields. Another key concern when considering the merit of a book is to reflect on who its implied or ideal reader is. For me, this one has two: undergraduate students and researchers keen to discover a starting point for the study of masquerade. Weldt-Basson's approach is to take well-studied and lesser-studied novels comparing and contrasting these and indicating key features of masquerade in the novel. Thus she compares Isabel Allende's Zorro (2005) with Carmen Boullosa's Duerme (1994), La comparsa (2009) by Sergio Galindo with two novels by Mario Vargas Llosa, and so on. This results in an intelligent and engaging analysis of the novels and a clear mapping out of the ways masquerade operates in these novels. For undergraduates who benefit from careful signalling and astute insights into literary studies, this approach would be highly beneficial. For researchers wanting an introductory overview, there are obvious gains to be had. Again, in this pro I find a con. The map this book provides is a sketch without all the details I would like to see. The literature review contained in the introduction is indicative of the gaps in the author's approach. It is carried out by picking out key authors linked through cognate disciplines or foci (literary studies, [End Page 1047] carnival in Latin America, the superhero, and so on), which is highly logical and coherent. The scholarly work is presented one at a time, described, and comparisons are drawn. But, no major conclusions are reached. They are but points on a map connected by masquerade. Their situatedness is not interrogated nor complicated by reference to their place in a wider territory or field. This has the advantage of being succinct with the frustration of being underdeveloped. Stylistically I found this book to be both carefully articulated and lacking. The author can write. The sentences are lucid and fluid. But, there are not enough of her own words in this book. She quotes primary and secondary sources extensively. This over-reliance on what others have said without interrogating their assertions takes from the flow and, ironically, masks meaning. An example of...