At the turn of the twenty-first century, Argentina was in the midst of its worst economic crisis in decades, the result of years of drastic neoliberal reforms. This book looks at the way ideas about race and nationhood were conveyed during this period of financial meltdown and national emergency, examining in particular how the neoliberal crisis led to the critical self-questioning of the dominant imaginary of Argentina as homogeneously white - allegedly the result of European immigration and the extinction of most indigenous and black people in the nation-building age. The Darkening Nation focuses on how the self-examination of racial and national identity triggered by this crisis was expressed in culture, through the analysis of literary texts, films, artworks and music styles. By considering a wide range of artistic and cultural products, and different forms of racial identity and difference (white, indigenous, Afro-descendant, immigrant and negro as it is understood in local contexts), this study constitutes a timely addition from a literary and cultural studies perspective to recent academic enquiry into race and nation in Argentina.

The proposed readership for this publication consists of undergraduates, postgraduates and researchers working on contemporary Argentinian culture and race in Latin America. It can also appeal to scholars who are researching on neoliberalism and crisis in a broader sense. Given that it is written in a simple way and it does not make heavy use of quoting or theory, it could appeal to a wider readership outside academia.

Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Exceptionalism
Migration
Space
Multiculturalism
Structure and texts
Chapter 1: Neoliberalism and its crisis
Chapter 2: The historical construction of whiteness in Argentina
Chapter 3: Facing darkness in the literature of the crisis
Literary production and the crisis
'Asterix el encargado'
La Villa
Cucurto
Chapter 4: 'A Bolivian walks into a bar...': Race in New Argentinian Cinema
The renovation of Argentinian cinema
Bolivia
Copacabana
Chapter 5: Amerindians, fashion models and picketeers
Huellas
La conquista del desierto
Grupo de Arte Callejero (GAC)
Chapter 6: Cumbia villera and the new racialised marginality
Cumbia music in Argentina
The boom of cumbia villera
Racialising the villero youth
Afterword
Works cited